


Marichat May 2016 Collection

by takethembystorm



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 21,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7837675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethembystorm/pseuds/takethembystorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of loosely connected drabbles in rough chronological order for Marichat May 2016.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sunbeams

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from [here](http://miracufic.tumblr.com/tagged/marichat-may).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 May Prompt: Cat Tendencies.
> 
> Cats like warm spots; Chat likes warm spots. And, of course, he has favorite spots.

“Chat,” she says, hands on hips.  “It’s a nice Wednesday afternoon.  Why are you here?”

Chat sprawls in the warm sunlight, humming contentedly.  “I like the way it smells here.”

“Aaaand _that’s_ not creepy at all,” Marinette says.

“It’d make more sense to you if you had my senses,” he says, wrinkling his nose at her. “My place smells all chemical and dry. Your home smells much better. Smells like people.  And food.”

“Not helping your case,” Marinette says, coming to sit by him.  She props her clipboard up on a thigh and starts scribbling away at her homework.

“I could let you try it on,” Chat says, batting lightly at her ankles.  “Try my powers for a while.”

“No thanks,” Marinette says.

“As you wish, Princess,” Chat says.  He peers at her homework.  “Left out the integral there,” he notes.

“Thanks,” Marinette says, scribbling it in.

Chat catnaps while Marinette works and occasionally nudges him awake when she gets stuck.

* * *

Marinette wakes with a jolt.  The afternoon sun has long since set, but Chat is still curled up next to her, breathing lightly in sleep.  He stirs as Marinette gets up.  


“Mm?” he murmurs.

“It’s nearly midnight,” Marinette says.  Well, they had been out pretty late on patrol last night, but she wasn’t expecting them to be this tired.  “You should go home.”

“Won’ be missed,” he says, syllables slightly slurred with the last vestiges of sleep.  “Wan’ stay here.”

“Mama and Papa won’t like it if they find you in my bed,” she says.

“They lov’ me,” he says, “il’ll be fine.  Sleep.”

She hasn’t the heart to deny him.

“Why do you like to cuddle so much?” she murmurs to him once they’re bundled up.

He mumbles something that she doesn’t quite catch.

“What?”

“Said,” he mumbles, a little louder.  “Y’ feel like sunshine.”


	2. Won't Say It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2 May Prompt: In Denial.
> 
> In which our favorite dorks take varying positions on love.

Marinette shuts and locks all her windows, then draws the curtains shut.  She clambers up the staircase to her skylight and latches it shut and considers for a moment taping a piece of butcher’s paper or something over it.  She decides against it.

She goes and slumps into her desk chair, biting at a thumbnail.

Fact one. Chat Noir has been visiting her fairly regularly   


Fact two. Chat Noir had, in fact, just concluded a visit to Marinette that they’d mostly spent bickering good-naturedly as she’d kicked his costumed ass repeatedly at Mecha Strike.

Fact three. Her parents, whom she knows for a fact are very much in love with one another, bicker like that.

Implication: she and Chat Noir are in—she derails that particular train of thought before it can get started—the same kind of relationship that her parents are in. Which, minimally, is a state of being completely and utterly comfortable with one another, and at the other extreme is the state of being utterly besotted with one another.  As in, gazing deeply into one another’s eyes by moonlight, feeding one another strawberries, rose petals and hot tubs besotted.

She snorts quietly.  She’s got to admit, all of that romantic garbage does sound like something Chat would do.

Which doesn’t matter, she amends hastily, because she and Chat Noir are most definitely not in love with one another.  They’re comfortable with one another.  That’s it.  That’s final. Even though the further implication is that they’re basically an old married couple.

“Oh, fuck me,” she groans.  “I’m in love with Chat Noir.”

A few blocks away, Adrien lies in his bed, staring at his ceiling.

“I’m _not_ in love with Marinette,” he mutters to himself. “I’m _not._ ”

“Whatever,” Plagg says.  “We’re out of cheese.”


	3. Can't Say It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3 May Prompt: Injured.
> 
> Chat searches for Marinette in the aftermath of a major incident.

“Marinette!” Chat screams as he tears through the rubble, claws rending concrete like tissue paper.  “Marinette!”

He’s got to find her, he’s got to find her, he’s got to find her—  


“Marinette!” he screams again.  Something tears in his throat and he’s suddenly seething more than shouting, his voice coming out in a barely-audible hiss of expelled air.  He keeps trying.

“Marinette!” he seethes as he digs his claws into a block of concrete as big across as he is tall.  He strains and pulls, and finally shifts it enough to get his fingers into the crack between it and the rubble beneath.  “Marinette!” he seethes as he lifts it enough to get down beneath it.

Marinette is there in the space benath the rubble.  Chat lowers the block carefully, hearing the rubble shift around him, and clambers down next to her.

“I heard you the first time, kitty,” Marinette says as he kneels next to her, checking her over from head to toes.  “I’m fine, just some scrapes.  Ankle’s sprained, maybe.”

The rubble shifts above them, and the ceiling grows perceptibly closer.

“Might not be fine for long,” she says, glancing up.

Chat gathers Marinette up carefully in his left arm and mutters Cataclysm to life about his right hand.  He focuses it into a lance of entropic annihilation with his will, and touches the rubble.

The entire twisted pile of concrete and rebar erupts in a fury of ethereal black flame.

He visits the next night.

“You haven’t let go of my hand once,” Marinette tells him with a small, soft smile.

He strokes his thumb over the back of her hand.

“That stunt of yours made the news, you know,” Marinette says.  “Protector of Paris saves dozens in freak building collapse.”

He shifts a little closer to her.

“I’m fine, Chat,” Marinette says with gentle emphasis.  “Thanks to you.”

And if he’s not there the next time?  If Ladybug’s not there?  If the rescue crews don’t make it in time?

He can’t actually vocalize any of these; Plagg’s still knitting his vocal cords up, and he’s sure that the kwami is being sulky and taking as long as possible about it.

He settles for resting his head on her shoulder.


	4. Guardian Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4 May Prompt: Protective Chat.
> 
> Chat hovers in the aftermath of the building collapse.

“I’m fine, kitty,” Marinette says, as patiently as she can manage.

It’s not very patient.  Week after week of Chat Noir hovering near obsessively over her every chance he gets is wearing on her nerves, and by now they’re raw and exposed.

“You were hurt—“ he begins.

“ _Six weeks ago_ ,” she snaps.  “If I’d had major surgery I’d be fine by now, let alone a sprained ankle.  God, what is wrong with you?”

Chat wilts.

“Look,” Marinette says after a while, “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have been so harsh with you.”  She scooches closer to him and lays her hand on his shoulder.  “But you’ve been off for a while now.  What’s wrong?”

Chat doesn’t respond, for so long that she thinks that he’s not going to answer.

“You could’ve died,” he says finally.  “You could’ve died or been hurt worse, or any of another thousand terrible things and I’m sorry, but”—he swallows and presses on—“I’ve lost too many people who are too important to me.  I can’t add you to that list.”

He sighs and stands.  “I’ll leave you be for tonight,” Chat says.  “Good night, Princess.”

“No, stay,” Marinette says.

“Prin—“

“Don’t you _dare_ Princess me,” Marinette says. “Stay.  I’ll wake you early so you can head back home.”

That night, Chat sleeps soundly.


	5. Bringing the Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5 May Prompt: Protective Marinette.
> 
> Marinette repays the favor.
> 
> WARNING: Blood, graphic violence.

Chat takes a boot to the gut that doubles him over and a rifle butt to the face that puts him on his ass.  A second kick to his jaw lays him out flat.

Chat lies there, head spinning, oozing on the ground, as the Inspector-Javert-neral plucks a paper cartridge from his belt.

“For too long,” the man growls as he reloads his rifle, “have your vigilante antics been tolerated.”  Chat stares muzzily at the finger-thick Minié ball as it’s forced down the rifle muzzle.

The Inspector-Javert-neral finishes reloading, takes one smart step back, and aims the rifle directly between Chat’s eyes.  “Goodbye, Chat Noir.”

Someone hits the Inspector-Javert-neral with a truck going at speed.  There’s a _whumph_ as the front grille crumples on impact and the man is sent flying, and a set of _whunka-whunka_ noises as he hits the ground and the truck runs him over.  He lies on the ground, groaning in stunned pain as the truck screeches to a stop, smoke and the smell of burning rubber coming up from its tires.

After a second, the truck starts _beep_ ing repeatedly, and backs up until its rear tires are seated firmly over the man’s abdomen and groin.

Marinette kicks the door open, hops down, and starts sprinting towards Chat.  She pauses a second to give the Inspector-Javert-neral one sharp kick in the throat.

“Princess?” Chat murmurs woozily as she hauls him up in a rough fireman’s carry. “Whud’re you doin’ here?”

“Goddamnit, Chat,” Marinette snaps, “help a little, he’s going to be back up in a minute.”

“Wha?”

“Start walking, I can’t drag you fast enough.”

Chat finds his left foot and places it in front of him, looking at it curiously. His leg buckles as he tries to place his weight on it and he stares curiously at the oozing hole in his leg, just above his knee.

“ _Shit,_ ” Marinette hisses.  She levers herself underneath him and hauls Chat up over her shoulders, staggering a little under his weight.  “I need to stop feeding you so much,” she pants as she works her way up to a quick trot.

“You shouldn’ be here,” Chat says, fighting for coherency.  “Dangerous.”

“I’m not the one being shot at, kitty,” Marinette says, kicking open a door and hauling him inside.  She drops him to the floor as gently as she can and drags him out of sight.

“Right,” she says after giving him a quick once-over, _“stay here_ , kitty.  I’m going to go for help.”

“Don’,” he mumbles as she takes off her jacket and ties it tightly over the hole in his thigh.  “Don’ go. Wait for Ladybug.”

Marinette gently pries his hand from her arm.  “I’ll be fine,” she says.  She leans in and kisses him quickly on the lips before she turns and runs out of sight.

Chat thinks that he hears a distant, furious roar of “Tikki!  Spots on!” before he blacks out.


	6. Someone Else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 6 May Prompt: "I like someone else."
> 
> Secret identities cause a bit of heartbreak for all involved.

“I’m sorry,” Marinette says.  The look on his face drives nails into her heart, but she presses on.  This needs to happen, for both of them.  “I—I like someone else.”

Adrien crumples.  Not physically, but something in him breaks and shatters and crashes in mirror-bright shards to the ground.

“O-Oh,” he says, voice very small.  He looks down.  “O-Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Marinette says again, as he turns and trudges off.

This is the last time, she swears to herself as he climbs into his car, the _last_ time that she’ll ever let herself think of Adrien as anything more than a friend.  It’s best this way.

It’s also the last time in two weeks that Chat Noir makes an appearance at her terrace. He appears just before midnight, ragged and haggard and tells her, voice hoarse, “I shouldn’t be here anymore. I’m sorry.”  Before she can say a word, he leaves, vanishing into the shadows.

Ladybug doesn’t bring up the issue in that time, until the ache finally tears its way free from her chest.

“Marinette misses you,” she says one night as they finish patrol.  “She misses you a lot.”

“You’ve spoken to her?” Chat asks.

“No, I live in her attic and eavesdrop when I’m bored,” Marinette snarks automatically. “Yes, I’ve talked to her.”

“How is she?” he asks.

“She misses you,” she repeats.

“But is she okay?” he presses.

Marinette chooses her words carefully.  “No,” she says, “she isn’t.”

She faces Chat and musters every scrap of will she has to keep her composure.  “She doesn’t know what she did wrong,” she says. “She doesn’t know why you don’t come anymore.  She misses you, Chat.”

“You can miss someone and still be fine,” Chat replies after a second.

“Do you really think that you’re that unimportant to her?”

“It’s not a matter of that—“

“Like _hell_ ,” she spits.  “She _cares_ about you, Chat, and then you just up and leave and don’t talk to her, don’t leave her a message, don’t do _shit_ and you think that’s all right?”

Chat shrinks in on himself, ears flattening to his skull.  “It’s not a matter of that,” he repeats.

“Then _what_?   _What_ is it a matter of?   _What_ justifies this?”

“Even if she cares for Chat,” he says, a little defiance working its way back into his voice, “what about when the mask comes off?  What about him, when he’s nothing but—but, a shell, a no one, a hollow man?”

The momentary spine he’s gained disintegrates, and he looks away.  “Better that she get over me now instead of letting herself be disappointed later.”

The slap nearly spins him off of the roof.

“How _dare_ you,” Marinette says as tears burn at the corners of her eyes, “make that decision for her.”

“My Lady?”

“If you have the _slightest_ respect for her,” she says, “for her intelligence and reasoning, you’ll let her make that decision for herself.”

Marinette leaps away before he can respond further.

She releases the transformation the instant her feet hit her bedspread.  Only then do the tears burst forth fully, two weeks’ worth, in a silent cascade that streams down her cheeks.  She curls up against a wall, knees to her chest, and cries and cries and cries, until she cries herself to sleep.

Chat Noir knocks on her skylight the next night.

“I’m sorry,” he says as she opens it and helps him in.

“I want you,” she says before she’s had time to regret it.  “I don’t care if you’re Chat or whoever, I don’t care what _bullcrap_ you think you are, you’re wonderful and good and kind and I am _never_ going to stop telling you that and I am never going to stop believing that so you can just stop if you think you’re going to ditch me and run.”

He blinks a few times.  “I wasn’t going to,” he says weakly.

“Good,” Marinette says.  “Because even if I love you you’ve got a long way to go for forgiveness, kitty.”

He hesitates, then takes her by the shoulders and draws her in close.  “I’ll take every step, Princess.”

“Overdramatic idiot,” she mumbles into his shoulder.


	7. Vanity Publishing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 7 May Prompt: Adrien Posters.
> 
> Chat starts considering restraining orders.

“Forgive me for asking,” Chat asks, “but why do you have so many pictures of Adrien up on your walls?”

Marinette freezes mid-sketch.

“I mean, I know you want to be a fashion designer,” he continues, “but this is a bit excessive.  I mean, a lot of these aren’t even very good.”  He pauses, then waggles his hand in a so-so gesture.  “Okay, at least it isn’t his best work.”

Marinette tries to think of an excuse. Having pictures of your former crush up on your walls for everyone, including your not-boyfriend-to-whom-you’d-declared-your-undying-love-regardless is probably one of those things that end poorly for all involved.

“I— _I_ don’t think they’re that bad,” she says. “I mean, they’re useful as references.”

She is going to tear all of them down and incinerate them in the bread oven the first chance she gets.

“Besides,” she says as Chat starts to snigger, “what do _you_ know about fashion?”

Chat quirks an eyebrow at her.  “Excuse me?” he drawls.  “Have you _seen_ me?”

“You’re more BDSM shoot than fashion statement,” Marinette says dryly.

Chat grins widely.  “Oh, _Princess_ ,” he drawls, “I had no idea your tastes _ran_ that way.  Personally it’s not my kink but I’d be willing to give it a try.”

“Oh, shut up,” Marinette says.  She starts her sketching again, but pauses as a thought strikes her.  “Are you _jealous_ , Chat?”

“What’s there to be jealous of?” Chat says, tracing one of the pictures with a claw.

Marinette suppresses a giggle.  “Well,” she drawls, “I did custom-design some clothing for him once.”

“Really?” Chat says with a disinterested air.  His tail swishes through the air.

“You _are_ jealous,” Marinette says.

“No, I’m not,” Chat replies evenly.

“You are, you’re jealous, you’re jealous,” Marinette sing-songs.  Her playful grin fades as she sees Chat’s expression.

“I’ll take them down if they bother you,” she says.

“It isn’t necessary,” Chat says.  He turns to her with a smirk.  “I _would_ like something hand-made with love, though.”

Marinette sets down her sketchbook, walks over to Chat, and kisses him briefly on the cheek.  “You’ll have it.”


	8. Know the Dancer from the Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 8 May Prompt: Dancing.
> 
> Chat is always one for grand gestures, and this night is no exception for Marinette.

Okay, it’s official.

She is in love with a manic.

“This is a bad idea!” she shouts into Chat’s ear as he flings them across Paris.  He grins harder and holds her more tightly to his chest as he hops lightly over a boulevard.

He’s moving more slowly than usual, she notes as rooftops and streets zip by below them, probably out of deference to her fragile, squishy civilian form. Ladybug would be fine if she fell from this height, Ladybug would be fine if she hit the ground at terminal velocity.  Marinette, well, there would probably be a degree of splashing.

She holds onto him a bit more tightly.

Finally he sets them down.  Marinette gingerly lets her feet down, finding solid flooring beneath them.  She looks around.

“Uh,” she says.  “Where are we?”

“A place I know,” Chat says with a grin.  “I called in a few favors.”

“And they just let you set up an entire dance floor?” Marinette says.

“That’s what favors are for, Princess,” he purrs.  “So that I can pamper my—“

His grin freezes in sudden terror.

Marinette gets it after a moment.  “You can say it,” she says, trying to hide her smirk.

“My”—he glances at her, then looks away—“girlfriend,” he squeaks.

“I mean,” he amends a moment later, “if you want to be.  If you just want to be friends with me—“

“I’d like that,” she says.

He blinks. “O-Oh,” he says.

“I’d also like to be something more,” she says, and she can’t hide her smile at the look of utter relief that passes over him.

“Well?” she prompts after a minute.

“Yes?”

“We’re on a dance floor.  Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?”

She has to give him this much: he recovers well.  Chat sweeps out an elaborate bow and takes her hand, pressing her knuckles to his lips.

The night goes well.


	9. Movie Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 9 May Prompt: Movie Night.
> 
> After an exhausting day, all Marinette wants is sleep, a nice long uninterrupted eight hours.
> 
> Shame that Chat has other plans.

Marinette collapses on her bed the moment she gets home.  As her transformation unweaves itself in a flare of pink-white light, she catches Tikki in a hand and lays the weary spirit down on her stomach.

“Sometimes,” she mutters to Tikki, “I hate this job.”

Tikki nods in mute sympathy and falls asleep.  Marinette covers the kwami lightly with a hand and fluffs up her pillow with the other.

Green Screen had been, pardon her French, a _bitch_ to fight.  Marinette takes a moment to quietly curse the overuse of digital effects in modern movies. He’d had basically the same powers as Nathanael but to a far greater extent.  He’d changed streets into rivers of lava, the Seine into a fake-looking CGI water serpent that had nevertheless been real enough to bat Chat through three buildings and a fruit vendor’s cart, and summoned dinosaurs out of thin air. They’d only beaten him by running and hiding, then ambushing him with a Faraday cage.

Marinette wakes with a start as someone raps lightly on her skylight.  She grabs her light blanket and drags it over herself on pure reflex as Chat sticks his head into view, eyes glowing luminously. He taps a claw on the skylight again and waves.

She loves him.  She really does.  But this is getting a little ridiculous.

She waves a tired arm, gesturing for him to come in; he opens the skylight, slithers in, and drops silently onto her bed next to her.

“Princess,” he says, grinning at her.  Good god, did Chat ever tire?  “Rough day?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she says, nudging Tikki awake.  The kwami zips away to the little kwami-sized room Marinette’s put together in one of her drawers.  “Why are you here?”

He leans down and kisses her on the forehead.  “We were going to watch _Princess Mononoke_ together,” he says.  “Princess. I’m wounded that you forgot.”

“Sorry,” she murmurs, kissing him on the cheek.  “Let me go get my laptop.”

“No, no,” he insists.  “Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll get it.”

“Kitty,” she protests half-heartedly, but he’s already bounding down the staircase. She takes the laptop as he settles down next to her under the blanket and pulls a flash drive from one of his pockets.

“Maybe I should be calling you Chein Noir instead,” Marinette mutters as she boots her laptop up.  Chat pulls her partway into his lap and nuzzles at the crook of her neck.

“Doesn’t quite roll off of the tongue,” he says.  He purrs in satisfaction as she absent-mindedly reaches up and scratches him behind an ear while the movie starts.

Twenty minutes later his breathing has slowed to the gentle rhythm of the deeply asleep.


	10. All the Terrors of the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 10 May Prompt: Nightmare.
> 
> Having to fight a magical war leaves its marks. This night, Marinette gets to suffer through them.
> 
> Takes place immediately after Movie Magic.

In her dreams, he dies.

He fades away in her arms as Chronogirl touches him, crumbling into insubstantial mist moment by moment as she clutches at the threads of his existence, every moment they’d shared together, every glowing laugh he’d belted out, every warm touch and searing kiss he’d given her flaring into sudden light.  She clutches at the ashes of memory as they’re caught up in a sudden gale.

The dreams change.  Now it’s her sprinting after Chat as he walks blithely towards the Tyrannosaurus, reaching desperately for his tail, being just that fraction of a second too late, watching as the massive jaws close around him with the crunching of bone and the rending of flesh—

And now he’s the one being knocked from Rogercop’s car, falling terminally to the earth below—

And now she’s a fraction of a second too late with the truck, and Chat jerks once as the Inspector’s bullet hits him then lays still—

“Marinette—“

And now he’s walking away from her, black suit resplendent against a starless, moonless, black night sky, boots hissing through black sand as he walks towards black mountains in the distance, a tall, black-robed figure beside him—

“Marinette!”

She wakes, choking on a scream.  She feels arms, tight around her waist, and flails instinctively, nearly knocking her laptop to the floor; a familiar clawed hand shoots out and grabs it.  She grabs the hand, gripping it in desperate, seeking fingers, clutching at its shape in the predawn gloom.

“Hey, hey, Princess,” someone murmurs in her ear as the hand sets the computer more securely aside.  “It’s all right.  Breathe, Princess.”

Chat. It’s Chat, sitting behind her, cradling her gently, rubbing his thumb in soothing circles over the back of her hand. Chat, breathing, the rise and fall of his chest a tangible presence on her back, the warmth of his body a furnace against her clammy skin.

She whirls and pins him to her bed, kissing him desperately, clutching him to her, touching him, feeling the muscles shift beneath his suit, feeling the fever heat of him, feeling the _life_ in him.  After a minute, her heart slows from its panicked tempo, and she lays her head down beside his, fighting to slow her breathing.

“Princess?” he murmurs with bruised lips, luminescent eyes searching her face.  “Are you all right?”

“Fine now,” she mumbles.


	11. Shall Not Conquer Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 11 May Prompt: "I almost lost you."
> 
> Marinette deals with the psychological side-effects from All the Terrors of the Night.

“Can you stay tonight?” Marinette asks him.

“Of course, Princess,” Chat answers.

He spends most of that night awake.  Some of the time is spent in quiet meditation, some quietly stroking Marinette’s arm or holding her close to him as she shudders through the depths of another nightmare, some trying to sleep but failing to out of sheer worry.

He jerks out of a light doze as Marinette shifts against him and glances over at her bedside clock.

Nearly five.  He needs to go.

Of course, since Marinette is clamped tightly around him, her face buried in the crook of his neck, that might prove a little difficult.

“Princess,” he murmurs, running a hand up and down her back.  “Princess, wake up.”

She rouses by degrees, holding on more tightly as she blinks sleep from her eyes. “Hm?”

“As much as I enjoy being in your bed,” he tells her with a slight smile, “it’s getting late, and it’ll be noticed if I’m gone from mine.”

“Don’ go,” she mumbles.  Her legs wind around his knees and thighs and clamp down, vise-like.

“Princess,” he repeats, a little more insistently.  “I need to go.”

“Don’”, she mumbles, and starts squeezing tightly enough that Chat starts to lose feeling in a foot.

He gives up the attempt for the moment and settles back, hand moving in soothing circles on her back until she loosens her grip enough for blood to start circulating again.  He stares at the ceiling as the sky lightens outside, bringing color to what had been night-vision blacks and greys.

“I know you’re awake, Princess,” he says after a while.  “We need to talk.”

When Marinette fails to respond he sighs and continues.  “I’m worried about you,” he says.  “You’ve not been yourself, you’re not sleeping well, you’re not talking to me. You don’t have to tell me now if you don’t want to, but we need to talk about it at some point.”

“I almost lost you,” Marinette mumbles into his chest, with some hesitation.  “Back during the whole Inspector thing.  He was going to kill you.”

“He didn’t,” Chat says.

“That apparently doesn’t stop my brain from thinking that you could’ve died,” Marinette says.

“Ladybug would’ve brought me back—“

“And if she couldn’t?”  Marinette says.

“She can,” Chat says.

“But if she _couldn’t_?” she insists.

Chat’s hand is a warm weight on her back as it stills.  “You’d manage.  Eventually, maybe, but you’d manage.”

“I don’t want to,” she mumbles.  “I don’t want to ever have to _manage_.”

He sighs again and holds her a little tighter to him.


	12. Though They May Hammer at the Gates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 12 May Prompt: Sleep Talking.
> 
> Marinette admits some things that she can't otherwise bring herself to voice.

“Cheese,” Chat mutters in his sleep, and turns over.

Marinette sighs and worms her way in closer to the warmth of his back rather than try to steal back her blanket again.

On the whole, having her boyfriend sleep with her is a positive.  It helps to stop the nightmares—well, at least she doesn’t remember them afterwards, which is effectively the same thing—he reliably warms her bed to a nice toasty temperature, and whenever she’s big spoon she gets a _very_ nice teddy chat.

As a minus, the bastard is a blanket hog.

Marinette takes a moment to curse all selfish hoggers of blankets as a draft of chill night air sends a brief chill down her back.  She shivers and reaches up to latch her skylight more firmly shut.

Of course, given her luck—or his, for that matter—Chat chooses that exact moment to roll over again, pinning half of her body beneath his weight.  The breath is driven out of Marinette with a _whuff_ , and for a moment, she considers employing an ever-dependable elbow to the gut to get him off of her.

But then his face relaxes into a look of absolute calm and peace, and she loses any will she had to disturb him.

She stares at him for a while, watching the shifting patterns of moonlight on his skin and suit as clouds skid by overhead.

“I’m terrified,” she tells him quietly.  He doesn’t respond, of course, and Marinette continues.

“I’m terrified of all of this.  I’m terrified that you’ll get tired of me, or that you’ll finally realize just how pathetic I am, or that you’ll find someone better.  I’m terrified that maybe one day you’ll take one bullet too many for me and I won’t be able to save you.”

She rants on, her voice gaining a keening edge.  “I’m terrified that I feel more comfortable around you than I have with anyone else in my life, and I don’t know why, and, and what if we lose that. I’m terrified about what you’ll think of me when you find out that I’m Ladybug, and everything about us just scares the _shit_ out of me and I don’t know why.”

She buries her face into the crook of his neck and mumbles into him, “I’m terrified that maybe I’m just fooling both of us into thinking that I love you, ‘cause I think that I still love Adrien, too and I don’t know if I can give either of you what you deserve.”

She’s feeling lightheaded now, perhaps because of the rush of words, perhaps because of the unbearable lightness that’s come over her heart like the joy of prisoners freed of their shackles.

She falls asleep, dreamlessly, a few minutes later.


	13. Hate at First Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 13 May Prompt: Possessive Kitty.
> 
> Kitty gets jealous.

Adrien tries to keep himself calm and under control.

He isn’t her boyfriend, he reminds himself, teeth grinding—well, in point of fact he is, but not as Adrien, damn his secret identity—which means that he can’t personally push this bastard’s face in.

A second thought occurs to him a beat later, which makes him grind his teeth harder. The whole “Adrien Agreste is not dating Marinette Dupain-Cheng” thing also means he can’t take the much-preferred option of grabbing Marinette, dipping her low, and kissing the living daylights out of her.  At least, he can’t do it without getting slapped.  Or, considering that this is Marinette he’s talking about, getting an arm broken.

Nino taps him on a shoulder.

“Yes?” Adrien says, with a hint of a disemboweling snarl in his voice.  Nino scoots to the side a little with his next step.

“Uh, you all right, man?” Nino says.

“Fine,” Adrien growls, keeping his eyes fixed forwards, fists shoved into his jacket pockets.

Ahead of them, the _transfer student_ —Adrien refuses to dignify him with a name—chats casually with Marinette, who smiles and laughs at his jokes appropriately but otherwise maintains a comfortable distance between them.

Adrien tries to force himself to relax.  This is Marinette, he tells himself, whose instinctive reaction to basically everyone she meets is to make them feel welcome and comfortable and a whole host of other adjectives that Adrien doesn’t care to associate with _him_.  This is the girl who not only loves him but who makes a point of reminding him of that every chance she gets.  He has zero reason to be concerned over _his_ proximity to her.

The transfer student playfully bumps shoulders with Marinette and Adrien growls deep in his chest.

* * *

“You’re more head-bumpy than usual today,” Marinette says absently as she strokes his hair behind an ear.  “What’s up?”

Chat purrs as he flops supine across Marinette’s lap and bats at her chin; Marinette rolls her eyes at him and shoves him off of her lap.  “I need to pee,” she says to Chat’s pout, and kisses him lightly on the forehead.

When Marinette comes back Chat flops back onto her lap.  Marinette sighs.

“Okay, kitty,” she says, running her fingers through his hair, “what’s wrong? And don’t bother denying it, you’re only ever this affectionate when something’s bothering you.”

Chat sighs and tells her.

“Are you stalking me?” Marinette says, narrowing her eyes at him.  Chat springs into a sitting position and waves his hands frantically in denial.

“No, no, not at all,” he babbles, “friends, I’m friends with Adrien, dropped by, he was complaining about—“

“Relax, kitty,” Marinette says, “I was kidding.  Though that does explain how you’ve been keeping tabs on me.”

She studies Chat as he sags in relief.  “So Adrien was talking about it, huh?” she asks quietly.

“Loudly,” Chat says.  He bobs his head to the side.  “I think he’s still interested in you.”

“Well, he’ll just have to deal,” Marinette says firmly.  “I’m in love with you, and you’re my boyfriend.”

Chat decides to not take the second it takes her to answer as an omen.

“But anyways,” she continues, “I think that your concerns about him are not, shall we say, entirely unfounded.”

“You have a plan, don’t you.”

“Not really,” Marinette says, waggling a hand in a “maybe-maybe not” gesture between them.  “Like, if he’s not going to make a big deal of it I’m not going to either.”  She bites her lip and looks away.  “I’ve broken enough hearts for now, I think.”

“He doesn’t seem the sort to _not_ make a big deal of it,” Chat notes as he pulls her up against him, her back against his chest.

Marinette shrugs.  “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.”

* * *

The _transfer student_ makes his move the next week.

“I am utterly _enchanted_ by you, Marinette,” he says, dropping to a knee and presenting her with a rich bouquet of flowers. “From the moment I arrived here, your beauty has burned constantly in my thoughts.”

He shoots her what he probably thinks is a heart-stopping grin.  “Would you be open to a dinner engagement this Wednesday?”

“Thank you,” Marinette says, taking a step back, “but I can’t say yes.  At all.”

His smile falters.  “What?”

“My answer, unfortunately,” she says, “is no.  I am not open to going on a date with you.”

“What, really?  Even after I went to all this trouble?” he responds, gesturing to his suit.

“Yes, really,” Marinette says, taking another step back.  Her hands rest easily and warily at her sides.

His brow furrows in confusion.  “Why not?”

“Because I’m not interested,” Marinette says patiently.

“You could be,” he says, “if you got to know me.”

“She’s got a boyfriend,” Alya cuts in, pushing Marinette behind her.

“Who?” the transfer student demands.

“Adrien,” Alya says.  Marinette chokes on her next breath.

“What, pretty boy?” he says.

“Yes, pretty boy, excuse me, come along, Alya,” Marinette says, grabbing Alya by the arm and dragging her off past Adrien.  “The _fuck_ are you thinking you know I’m not interested in him anymore—“ he hears Marinette hiss as they go by.

He hears footsteps and turns back to see the transfer student standing entirely too close to him.

“You don’t deserve her,” he says, and tries to follow Alya and Marinette, only to be blocked by Ivan.

Ivan growls.

Ivan is, in actuality, probably the only person in the room who could give Rose a run for her money in the cuddliness department.  But, Adrien has to admit, he has a very good growl.

The transfer student goes and sits grumpily at his seat, chucking the bouquet into the garbage bin on his way.

Later that day, as Adrien is waiting for the Gorilla, Marinette comes up to him and hugs him tightly.

“Please don’t tell Chat until I get a chance to talk to him,” she whispers in his ear.

She leans back, pecks him quickly on the cheek and says, with an airy, flirty air worthy of Chloe, says, “See you tomorrow, Adrien,” before scurrying off.

It’s kind of creepy.

* * *

“So, long story short I’m pretend-dating Adrien Agreste until we figure out a permanent solution to this mess,” Marinette explains to Chat.  “I am really, really sorry about this.”

“Well, so long as you don’t bear his child or anything,” Chat says.  Marinette punches him on the shoulder.

“Chat!”

“I don’t have a problem with this, Princess,” Chat says.  “Whatever helps you get through this.”

She stares at him for a minute.  “You’re,” she says eventually, “like, not going to threaten to punch Adrien if he gets handsy or anything?”

“What good would that do?” Chat says.  “Besides, you hit harder than I do.”

“Damn skippy.”


	14. Mayhem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 14 May Prompt: Possessive Marinette.
> 
> Adrien isn't the only one who gets jealous.

This is Chat, she reminds herself. This is Chat Noir, her partner. Her loyal and trusted companion, to whom she’s spilled her heart on many a night—albeit usually while wearing pajamas, not an armored spandex-like bodysuit. This is Chat, who’d told her one night when he thought she’d been asleep, his voice trembling with the fervor of it, that he loved her, and that so long as she wanted him he’d be hers.

Which means that she should not be thinking about strangling each and every member of the horde of fangirls—correction, fangirls and –boys—crowding around Chat.

“Let me have your babies!” someone shrieks as Chat backs away, hands held defensively before him. Marinette tries to keep her fists from clenching. Superheroes do not murder people, she reminds herself—well, they don’t _usually_ murder people so long as they’re from DC, and she’s always been a DC girl.

“Only person who’s having his babies is me in a decade,” she growls through a clenched-teeth smile. “I’m sorry, what was that?” she asks to an inquisitive reporter.

God, when had this happened? He’d always been attractive, in a “cutest boy in class” kind of way, but he’d never had a fanclub[1] before. And then they’d just showed up one day, dozens of them, asking for autographs and selfies and now apparently for him to knock them up.

She glances over to where Chat is starting to look distinctly panicky.

Oh, right, it’d been when two years of backed-up puberty had hit him in about five minutes flat and he’d shot up past a hundred ninety centimeters, gained a dozen kilos of solid, lean muscle, and gotten a voice that sounded like warm honey.

“Okay, no more questions, I am really very sorry,” Marinette says cheerily. “Busy day as you all know, please direct all further questions to the Ladyblog, goodbye, thank you!”

She marches over to Chat, grabs him by an arm, and hauls him out of the crowd. They leap away.

“Thank you for that save, Ladybug,” Chat tells her with a smile. Mm, that’s more common now, too. She misses hearing “my Lady” a little, but it’s more than made up by the way he says “Princess” in the evenings.

“No problem,” she says, holding up a fist.

They bump and depart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Meets Wednesdays and Saturdays.[ return to text ]


	15. Inevitably, a Masquerade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 15 May Prompt: Costume Party
> 
> Chloe throws a ball and everyone's invited!
> 
> Including Chat Noir and Ladybug. And Adrien and Marinette.
> 
> Oh dear.

“All I’m saying is that you need to stand up to him, and just come out and say it,” Alya says.  “Just tell him, you’re bothering me, I don’t like you, piss off.”

“We’ve told him that multiple times,” Marinette says.  “Adrien, what was the answer to number three again?”

“Root twenty-two,” Adrien says, toying with some yarn.

“Thanks.” Marinette scowls at the rows of numbers, then erases a few and starts over.  "I think he thinks that if he tries hard enough I’ll just give up and go out with him.”

Nino snorts.  “Sounds a lot like Chat.”

Three voices are raised in instant outrage.

“Hey, Chat Noir is not like that—“

“He’s a perfect gentleman and he’d never—“

“Chat would never force something that someone didn’t want on them—“

“Are you really comparing Alejandro to Chat—“

“I am personally offended that you would think that _Chat Noir_ , a guy who puts his life on the line on a regular basis for the good of all Paris, is _anything_ like _that dick_ —“

“Chat Noir is wonderful and romantic and kind—“

The incipient slaughter is cut off abruptly as Tom pokes his head into the room. “Please keep it down,” Tom rumbles.

“Sorry, Papa,” Marinette mumbles.

“Sorry, Tom,” the others chorus.

Tom nods and closes the trapdoor.

“I was going to add _back when he was into Ladybug_ ,” Nino says grumpily.  “But like, less pushy.”

Marinette rolls her eyes and settles back into her seat, crossing her arms over her chest.  “If you do want to make comparisons, you’d be better off comparing him to Lila.  Or Chloe.”

“Hey,” Adrien says, frowning slightly.  “That’s not entirely fair.”

Marinette raises an eyebrow at him.  “Really?”

“Dude,” Nino says, “I know that you and Chloe were friends for a while—“

“Are friends.”

“—are friends, but loyalty only goes so far.”

“It’s not like that,” Adrien says, running a hand through his hair.  He scratches at the back of his head.

“Look,” he sighs as the others stare at him expectantly, “I’m not going to pass judgment on Lila, I don’t know her well enough either to condemn or defend on that particular point.  But Chloe, well.”

He waves his hands about vaguely.  “Look, you have to understand that Chloe grew up in a world believing two things: everything was yours so long as no one stopped you, and anyone who tries to stop you is an enemy and needs to be ended.”

“You’re not making a very good case there,” Alya says.  “I mean, you’re basically saying ‘Yes, Chloe is a selfish, petty bitch with about as much natural empathy as a crocodile.’”

“Yeah, well, think about how someone like that would respond when she loses her mother,” Adrien says.  “All of a sudden everything she thinks is wrong.  She loses someone who she’s always thought of as hers, and it’s someone who absolutely can’t be an enemy of hers because it’s her mother, even though she’s stopping her from having something she wants.  Like a family.”

“You’d think a reasonable person would, y’know, reconsider their worldview and maybe wonder if they’re wrong,” Alya says, her voice desert-dry.

“She’s a frightened little girl in a lot of respects is my point,” Adrien says. “She’s holding on to what she does have and lashing out at any threat to it.  But she’s improving.”  He walks over to his bag and rummages around in it for a moment.  “Which reminds me,” he says over his shoulder, “I have proof.”

He pulls out three envelopes, slightly rumpled, and hands them out.

“She’s actually inviting us?” Nino asks.  “You sure she’s not just doing this just to like, drop bags over our heads and cart us off someplace dark and dungeon-like?”

“She’s Chloe, not some Bond villain,” Alya says absently.  “Technically her dad’s gig, not hers.  Hm.”

“Of course it’s a Ladybug-themed masquerade,” Marinette says.  “You didn’t talk her into inviting us or anything?”

“Nope,” Adrien says.  “She handed them to me yesterday, own volition.”

“Ugh.” Marinette tosses the invitation onto the desk and slumps into her chair.  “All right,” she announces to the room at large.  “All of you send me pics of what you’ll be wearing, Alya, grab my measuring tape, Adrien, see if you can smuggle me into your dad’s supply closet.”

“You don’t need to do this for us,” Nino protests.

“Fuck that. If we’re going to _Chloe’s_ party we’re showing up in style,” Marinette growls.

* * *

“Well, don’t you all look lovely,” Chloe, the ever-gracious hostess, says through clenched teeth several days later.  “I do hope you have fun.”

She tosses a wink at Adrien from behind her red-and-black spotted mask and blows him a kiss, glares daggers at the others, and stalks off into the crowd.

Nino frowns at the DJ on the stage.  “Don’t you dare start this again,” Alya says, eyes narrowing behind her fox-themed mask colored in tones of vermillion and umber, gold thread outlining flowing sections of white.  “We are not getting thrown out again because you couldn’t keep your professional critiques to yourself.”

“Babe.” Nino pouts from under his plain green mask.

“Do you think Ladybug and Chat Noir will actually show up?” Adrien asks quickly. He adjusts his own made-with-love Ladybug-themed mask.  “I mean Chloe was talking about it all week.”

“Well, it’s a public function held specifically in their honor,” Marinette says carefully.  “I’d say even odds.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Adrien says.  “Ten euros they don’t show?”

“Twenty. I have things to buy, pretty boy.”

“Done.”

Marinette smirks beneath her mask as they shake on it.  Adrien catches himself staring.

In his defense, her mask is a marvel in spite—or, Adrien thinks, recalling a lecture from his father, because—of its simplicity.  It prowls down from her hairline like a pack of wolves stalking from a forest, merging so seamlessly that it’s hard to tell where mask stops and person begins, flowing down the lines of her face, down her forehead and along her cheekbones until they meet in a point at the tip of her nose.  He and Alya and Nino had opted to paint theirs, but Marinette had gotten her hands on a dull matte black spandex and stretched it over the mask; in the light of the ballroom, it seems to drink in the light, making the curves and lines of the mask vanish into a pit of utter oblivion.

Adrien feels his heart flutter as he meets her eyes.  She’d gone the extra step of setting green plastic lenses into the eyeholes, the material the exact shade of his transformed own.

Well, he’s got an hour plus to kill before Chat Noir is due to make an appearance.  “Would the lady care to dance?” he asks, sweeping out a bow.

Marinette carefully curtsies, her midnight-black dress brushing the floor.

“I may have an hour or two to spare, yes,” she says.

* * *

An hour later, Adrien makes his excuses and transforms, reappearing onstage with Ladybug to thunderous applause.  Ladybug makes a perfunctory speech before they make their excuses and leave.

It happens just as Adrien returns, adjusting his suit.

“Princess,” _he_ purrs, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles.  Adrien sees Marinette go stiff, and her smile go waxen.  “May I compliment you on your mask?”

“You may,” Marinette says.  “You may also let go of my hand.”

“Oh, please, Marinette,” _he_ laughs, leading her in a quick one-two one-two step that’s somewhat impaired by her resistance.  “If you don’t give me a chance, how else am I supposed to win your heart?”

“You don’t,” Marinette replies.

“Give me a _chance,_ at least,” he says, leaning in close.

Adrien’s had enough.  He steps forwards, timing his movements, and with a kick to the back of a knee and a shove to the back, shoves the prick away from Marinette.  Alejandro rounds on Adrien with a snarl.

Marinette steps between them, facing Alejandro.

“Alejandro,” she says, her voice cutting through the music like a shaped charge through ash planking, “stop.”

“What the fuck was that?” Alejandro says, ignoring her.

“That was _me_ ,” Adrien snaps, “getting _you_ away from _my_ girlfriend!”

_He_ laughs.  “Again with this _girlfriend_ thing.  You’re a damn poor boyfriend even if it is true. Hell, I’ve barely seen you _kiss_ her.”

Before Adrien’s self-preservation instinct can kick in and remind him of how nice it would be if his secret girlfriend doesn’t castrate him, he grabs Marinette by a shoulder, spins her around, dips her, and kisses her deeply, ramming his tongue into her mouth as she gasps in surprise.

After a dead silent, shocked few seconds, Marinette’s hand comes up to his chest, and she pushes gently.  Adrien helps her upright and steps back, his lips tingling from the contact.  Her eyes flash behind her mask, and Adrien swallows nervously.

Marinette turns to Alejandro, who’s still raising a skeptical eyebrow.  “Well, there’s your proof,” she says calmly.  “Now, try to win my heart again and I tear your lungs out through your ears.”

She turns back to Adrien and grabs him by an arm, dragging him outside with her.

Marinette shoves Adrien in front of her and puts her hands on her hips.

“Adrien, that was out of line,” Marinette says, her eyes flinty with anger.  “You say you’re Chat Noir’s friend, then you’ll respect that I’m _his_ girlfriend, not yours.”

“Marinette, I’m sorry—“

“Sorry doesn’t cut it this time, Adrien,” Marinette says.  “Do that again, and you get the same treatment as Alejandro. Understand?”

Adrien watches as Marinette storms back inside.

Well, this is just one hell of a party.


	16. Coming Clean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 16 May Prompt: Confessions.
> 
> In which Alya finds out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Partially inspired by [this](http://raydrawlings.tumblr.com/post/140128496543/he-slept-in-a-little-based-off-this-vine).

Alya knocks hurriedly at the bakery’s back door, dancing from foot to foot.  Tom answers it a moment later, hands dusted with flour.

“Alya?” he asks.  “It’s not even dawn yet, what’s the matter?”

“Can I talk to Marinette?” Alya says excitedly.  “I have great news for her.”

Tom snorts and lets her in.  “If you can wake her up, then sure.”

“Thanks!” Alya rushes up the stairs, screaming excitedly the entire way.  “Hi Mrs. Cheng bye Mrs. Cheng!”

“Marinette~!” Alya sing-songs as she pops her head through the trapdoor.  “Guess whose article got accepted!”

She clambers up into Marinette’s room, flicks on the lights, and scampers up the stairs to her bed, screeching “Imma be published imma be published imma be published!”

Marinette is buried beneath her blankets so thoroughly that the only thing that can be seen of her is the very top of her head.  She gives a quiet groan as Alya kneels on her bed and starts shaking her.

“Marinette~!” Alya says again.  “Wake up wake up wake up!”

Marinette gives a little noise that could be best approximated as “fnghh” and curls up tighter.

Alya pouts. “You are not being very cooperative right now,” she says.  She grabs the blankets and hauls.

She nearly falls off of the bed in utter shock.

Marinette isn’t alone in bed.  She’s playing little spoon to a lean, broad-shouldered figure clad head-to-toe in black, with a pair of black cat ears sticking up from a mess of goldenrod hair.

“What the fuck?” Alya blurts as Marinette blinks against the light.

“Alya?” Marinette mutters.  She studies Alya’s face for a moment, then follows her gaze.  Her eyes widen.

As Alya takes a breath to scream, Marinette pounces, grabbing Alya by the shoulders and driving her head into her pillows.  Alya’s scream comes out as a sort of hissing as she struggles, kicking and struggling wildly.  Chat gets kicked repeatedly in the shins, and he wakes with a startled grunt.

“Princess?” he murmurs as he sits up.

“Busy,” Marinette says.  “Alya, I’ll let you up if you promise to keep quiet.”

Alya stops struggling.  “Yes,” she says, her voice muffled by the pillows.  Marinette nods and lets Alya back up.

Alya draws in another breath and manages to get the first syllable of “Mrs. Cheng” out before Marinette drives her head back into the pillows.

After another thirty seconds while Chat tries to process exactly what’s going on, Marinette lets a red-faced, panting Alya back up.

“What,” she gets out through heavy breaths, “the fuck?”

“Try to scream again and I _will_ gag you,” Marinette says.

“Oo,” Chat murmurs, rubbing sleep from his eyes, “kinky.”

“ _Not_ the time, kitty.”

“Kitty?” Alya looks between the two of them. “Holy fuck,” she breathes.  “You two even have pet names for each other.”

“Mm,” Chat says, his tail winding around Marinette’s waist, “’s us.”

Marinette swats Chat’s tail away with a sharp look of annoyance.  “I don’t suppose you’d accept that he stopped by late on patrol and I offered him a place to sleep so he wouldn’t kill himself trying to get back home?” she says hopefully.

“No,” Alya says, shaking her head.  “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Damn,” Marinette sighs.

“What the _fuck_?” Alya repeats.  “You’re Chat Noir’s _lover?_ ”

“Girlfriend,” Marinette corrects, shooting a warning glance towards Chat.  “We aren’t planning on taking that step for another few years.”

“Girlfriend then,” Alya says, still wide-eyed and staring.  “Holy _fuck._  Uh, how—how long?”

“A year,” Marinette says.

“Six months,” Chat mumbles, flopping back down and curling up into a ball. Marinette frowns down at him, brow furrowing.

“What do you mean, six months,” she says.  “You started visiting a year ago.”

“First date,” Chat says.  “Five months twenty-six days.  Official.”

“Ah.” Marinette turns back to Alya.  “Six months.”  She swats Chat’s tail away again as it tries to wind around her thigh.

“Six months,” Alya breathes.  “You’ve been dating Chat _fucking_ Noir for _six months_.”  She glances up at Marinette.  “No one else knows?”

“Ladybug knows,” Marinette says, “and Adrien knows, Chat told him.”

Chat grabs a pillow and places it over his head, grumbling something about “got two hours of sleep let me sleep damn you all.”

“Your parents?”

“Don’t know.”

Alya blinks.  “Well, that explains why you tried to smother me at least.”

Tears start to well in her eyes.  “Six months,” she repeats in a whisper.  “Why didn’t you tell me?  Don’t you trust me?”

Marinette looks away.  “It’s not that—“

“It sure as hell looks like that,” Alya spits, wiping at her eyes.

Marinette sighs.  “Alya, you don’t know when to stop,” she says softly.  “That’s part of why you’re such a great reporter, you dig and dig and you refuse to stop until everything’s exposed.  If you’d known that I had an inside source you would’ve gotten details out of me and eventually you would’ve published something incriminating, something that only someone close to Ladybug and Chat Noir could’ve known.”

“I would’ve let you vet it,” Alya protests.

“We’re not perfect, Alya,” Marinette says.  “We would’ve made a mistake at some point.”

Alya looks as though she wants to snap at Marinette, but stops herself in time. She takes a few deep breaths before continuing.

“Okay,” she says.  “Okay. Fine.  I can accept this.  On two conditions.”  She points at Chat.  “One, you get me exclusive interviews with him and Ladybug, whenever I want.”

“Alya—“

“Shut up,” Alya says, jabbing a finger into Marinette’s chest.  “ _I’m_ talking now.  Two, I tell Nino.”

“Alya—“

“No,” Alya snaps.  “You two are _not_ dragging me into this whole pile of lies bullshit you have going, you are _not_ making me keep this from your friend and my boyfriend. I’m telling him.”  Alya takes another breath.  “Right, I’m leaving before I say something I regret now.”

Marinette watches as Alya leaves and sighs.  “Kitty, you need to go,” she says, shaking Chat lightly, “before it gets light.”

* * *

“Well, that explains why she isn’t into Adrien anymore,” Nino muses.

“Please be serious about this,” Alya snaps.

“Babe, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” Nino sighs as Alya paces back and forth in front of him.  “I’m not taking their side,” he says hastily as Alya shoots him a murderous glare, “I agree with you, I think that what they did was a shit move, but I don’t think you need to worry about Chat being a dick or anything.  He doesn’t seem the type.”

“How do you know—how does _anyone_ know?” Alya says.  “No one even knows who he is!”

“He’s a superhero,” Nino says.  “And do you really think Ladybug would work with him if he was a bad person?”  He raises an eyebrow at her as Alya splutters.

“Look, I’m just worried,” Alya finally admits, slumping into a chair across from Nino. “She’s keeping _big_ secrets from us, from everyone.  What if something goes wrong and she keeps that secret too?”

Nino snorts.  “Alya, this is you we’re talking about,” he says, walking over to her and kneeling.  He takes one of her hands in both of his.  “Reporter extraordinaire.  You’d find out in about five seconds flat.”

Alya grumbles, but leans down and presses her forehead against his.  “Let’s hope you’re right.”


	17. Suspicions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 17 May Prompt: Paparazzi.
> 
> Alya remains vigilant of Marinette's relationship.

“Alya, you don’t need to do this,” Marinette says.

“Like hell I don’t,” Alya growls as she sifts through photos.  “This was the agreement, I don’t out you to your parents, you stay out of my way.”

“Alya,” Marinette protests, but Alya ignores her as she scrolls through the photos she’d taken of Ladybug and Chat Noir during yesterday’s fight.

Marinette suppresses an irritated growl and settles down into her seat.

“I swear if he keeps trying to score with Ladybug on the side,” Alya mumbles to herself. “Look, he’s holding her hand here,” Alya says.  Marinette makes a show of looking over Alya’s shoulder.

“He’s helping her out of the way,” Marinette says.

“He’s holding on a bit tightly for just ‘getting her out of the way’.”

“Alya—“

“Don’t ‘Alya’ me,” Alya growls.  “You keep secrets from me, guess what, you get to deal with me making doubly sure that nothing fishy is going on.”

“There is no secret Ladynoir romance going on, Alya,” Marinette says.

Alya ignores her.


	18. See No Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 18 May Prompt: Stargazing.
> 
> Marinette attempts to take her mind off of recent troubles (read: nosy Alya).

“Shame we’re not out in the countryside,” Marinette says.  “Mama and Papa took me out there once.”

Chat doesn’t say anything, but settles the blanket more firmly around his shoulders.

“Can see the whole Milky Way, just stretched out across the sky,” she continues. “Just this huge blanket of stars.”

“You’re really not worried?” Chat says quietly.  “About Alya?”

Marinette pauses.  “I thought,” she says, “that we were supposed to be having a romantic night out.”

Chat sighs and gently grasps her under the arms, lifting her into his lap.  “You’ve been dodging the question for two weeks.”

“What question?”

“Marinette.”

“You are not being a very supportive boyfriend,” Marinette says.

“I didn’t know that part of being your boyfriend was being a bobbleheaded yes man,” Chat replies with mild reproof.

Marinette doesn’t respond, but tucks her chin into her chest.

“This whole thing with Alya is hurting you,” he says.

“We’ll get over it,” Marinette says.

“Not if you don’t _talk_ to her about it,” Chat says. “You guys barely so much as look at each other anymore.”  Chat holds Marinette a little tighter against him as a chill breeze wafts past.  “And when you do talk, you end up arguing half the time.”

“I really messed up, didn’t I?” Marinette says after a long silence.  Chat shrugs.

“I think that your concerns were valid,” he says.  “Yes, Alya doesn’t always know when it’s appropriate to stop—as do you, on occasion—but at the same time I think that if you’d talked to her at the start, you could’ve worked something out.”

“It isn’t as though she needs to gatekeep every relationship that I have,” Marinette mutters.

“Also true,” Chat acknowledges.  “But this was more than that on multiple levels.”

“Look,” he says, “I think that you made the right call.  But think about how she must feel.”

Marinette shrinks against him as he continues.  “First, Alya is your best friend.  You share _everything_ with her, and the idea that you were keeping a secret as big as us from her probably hurt a lot more in that context.  Second, you know how much Ladybug and I mean to her, and to have me sitting right here, visiting you almost daily while she has to fight for every scrap of video she gets”—he shrugs—“must be a slap in the face to her.”

“I know all of this,” Marinette says, her voice gaining a little heat.  “What, do you think I’m stupid?”

“I think that you’re a lot like Ladybug,” Chat says levelly.  “Sometimes, the both of you need a little push.”

“So how do you suggest I fix this, huh?” Marinette says.

“I don’t know,” Chat says after a moment with a sigh.  “I’ve never had to go through something like this.  But I think that it starts with you letting her know that you know you did wrong.”

Marinette doesn’t respond.

“Damn you,” she says after a minute.  “Let me get my phone.”


	19. Hear No Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 19 May Prompt: Eavesdropping.
> 
> Chat doesn't mean to eavesdrop, but it's a bit hard when you have super-hearing.
> 
> A direct continuation of See No Evil.

Chat stays on the terrace while Marinette heads inside.  He considers his options.

Sit cross-legged against the railing, lounge on the deck chair, or stand.

The last two feel too awkward for the situation.  Chat goes with option one.

His cat’s ears twitch as he settles down; distantly, they pick up on the beeping of Marinette’s phone, then the sound of ringing.  It goes to voicemail.

“Hey, Alya,” Marinette says.  “Look, um”—she swallows and forges on—“I wanted to talk.  For real.  About—about what I did.”

Chat flattens his ears to his head and hums to himself— _Hm Hm Hm HM Hm Hm Hm hm hm hm Hm HM HMMMM hm-hm_ —as Marinette continues, muffling the words into incoherence.  After maybe a minute, Marinette comes back up, tucking her phone into a pocket of her sweatpants.

“Okay,” she breathes, sitting down next to Chat and drawing her knees to her chest. “Okay.”

Chat leans back and waits for her to speak.

“Went to voicemail,” Marinette says.  Her hand comes up to her mouth in an unconscious gesture as she chews at her thumbnail.  “I guess we’ll see tomorrow.”

Not five seconds after that her phone buzzes.  Marinette scrabbles for it, nearly falling over as she pulls it free and answers.

“Hello?”

“You called me,” Alya replies.  “Let’s talk.”

“Sure,” Marinette says quickly.  “Like, right now talk, or tomorrow—“

“Tomorrow,” Alya says.  “Goodnight.”

“Night.”

* * *

Chat is present the next day as Alya and Marinette talk things out.

Nino nods at him before donning his headphones and leaning back against the door, looking studiously away from where Alya and Marinette are talking.  Adrien does likewise, sticking his hands in his pockets, but can’t shut off his hearing so easily.

“Look,” Marinette says softly, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Alya says, her tone controlled.

“For keeping, well, _him_ secret,” Marinette says. “For not trusting that you’d keep our secret.”

Alya crosses one leg over another; her arms stay folded across her stomach. Marinette keeps her gaze down. 

Alya sighs heavily and drops her gaze from Marinette.  “Apology accepted,” she says quietly.  “And I’ve put some thought into it, and I was”—her eyes flick up, then down—“not as fair as I could have been.  I should’ve been more understanding about this whole mess, I mean, of course you’d want to keep it on the down-low, you’re dating a freaking _superhero._ ”

No one says anything for a minute, and the only sound in the room is Nino’s music, humming distant and tinny from his headphones.

“But it still hurts,” Alya says.  “I mean, you know how important _they_ are to me, and he’s showing up every night, you could’ve at least advanced the question.”

“I know,” Marinette says.  Steel flows into the curve of her spine and the lines of her face as she straightens. “But I’m not going to badger him just so you can get a few minutes of footage.  If he wants to, he wants to, and if he doesn’t, he doesn’t, that’s final.”

“Fair enough,” Alya sighs.  She gets up and holds out her arms.  “Hug it out?”

Marinette hugs her, briefly but tightly.

“I still want to talk to him,” Alya says as the two separate.  “Not about anything for the Ladyblog,” she adds quickly, “just about the two of you.”

“Fine,” Marinette sighs.


	20. Speak No Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 20 May Prompt: 3AM Talks.
> 
> Some resolution finally gets managed.
> 
> A direct continuation of Hear No Evil.

“What are your intentions with Marinette?” Alya asks, staring fixedly at Chat.  He returns her gaze steadily.

“I mean to ensure that she is loved,” he says calmly, “and that she always has someone there for her.”

“Is it really necessary to do this at three in the freaking morning?” Marinette groans.

“Why are you still flirting with Ladybug, then?” Alya says, ignoring her.

“Ladybug, Marinette, and I discussed it,” he says levelly.  “We decided that it was the best option to keep any nosy reporters off of our tail.  An extra safety measure, to ensure Marinette’s safety and privacy.”

Alya’s eyes narrow at the subtle rebuke.  Her next words carry just a hint of ice.  “How do you plan to handle it if any nosy reporters catch you two, then?”

Chat shrugs.  “We will deny everything and claim it was photoshopped,” he says.  “Following that, a possible option is for me to reveal my identity to Marinette and continuing our relationship without the mask.”

“I told you already, kitty, if I get taken by one of those akuma and I know your identity, it makes me significantly more dangerous to you.”

“I’ll take that risk.”

“Cute,” Alya says, cutting in.  “Let’s get back on track.”

On it goes for another twenty minutes, until Alya sits back, satisfied.

“All right,” she says.  “I’m not opposed.”

“Fantastic,” Marinette grumbles.  “Can I go back to sleep now?  Also why did we have to do this on my terrace?”

Chat steps forwards and kisses her lightly on the forehead.  “Tomorrow night?”

“Night after.  I’m gonna need the extra sleep after tonight.”

“As you wish, Princess.”  Chat turns to Alya, who faces him with her arms crossed over her chest.  “Shall we go then?”

As Marinette latches the skylight shut behind her, Alya climbs onto Chat’s back and holds on tightly as he leaps across the city, returning her to her home. Chat deposits her in her room, then with a murmured goodbye, turns to leave.

“Wait,” Alya says.  Chat pauses, one foot on her windowsill.

“For what it’s worth,” Alya says, “I think that the two of you make a good pair.”

“Thank you,” Chat says, turning towards her.  His eyes glow luminously.

“You’re welcome,” Alya says.  “But keep this in mind, bucko.”

Alya steps forwards and aims a threatening finger at his chest.  “Break her heart,” she says in a whisper, “or hurt her in any way and I _kill_ you, superpowers or not. I’m going to skin you alive and hang your corpse off of the Arc de Triomphe by the _balls_.”

Chat faces her fully and sighs.  “Alya,” he says, “I know you still don’t trust me fully.  But rest assured that if that ever does happen, I’ll let you.”


	21. Reminiscence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 21 May Prompt: The Chat Noir Doll.
> 
> Chat pokes around and digs up some embarrassing stuff.

“Nino, you’re staring again,” Alya notes.

“ _Babe_ ,” Nino says as Alya fusses with her camera, “I’m sitting here, talking to an actual superhero.”

“You got saved by them once,” Marinette notes as she types up a report.

“Because they had to fight me,” Nino says.  “This is more like having Francis Cabrel show up for your birthday party.”

“What,” Chat says with lazy offense, “you’re not going to make the comparison to Jagged Stone?”

“I don’t see Ladybug here,” Alya says.  Marinette snorts; Nino chortles.

“Sick burn, babe,” Nino says.  “Up top.” Alya high-fives him without looking away from her camera.

“I get no respect,” Chat says, wandering aimlessly.  He steps around a corner of the white sheet they’d set up for a background and looks around.

“You get to make out and cuddle with me on a regular basis,” Marinette says.  “And I feed you.”

“True enough,” he says after a moment’s contemplation.  There’s a sudden snigger from behind the curtain.

“You better not break anything,” Marinette calls.

Chat sticks his head out from behind the curtain with a wide, impish grin on his face. Marinette sighs and faces him.  “Let’s get it over with, kitty, what are you going to do now?”

As answer, Chat holds out a doll.  Marinette finds herself flushing.

_Damn_ it.  She thought she’d locked them away securely enough.

“ _Princess_ ,” he drawls in what Alya had immediately dubbed his “sex voice” the first time she’d heard it.  “What on _earth_ is this?”

“Nothing,” she says with as much composure as she can manage.

“I’ve never seen _him_ before,” he continues, stepping out.  He toys with a lock of yarny hair.  “Do you cuddle with him when I’m not around?”

“I made those for Manon,” Marinette says, flushing.  “We play with them when I babysit her.”

“Doesn’t mean that maybe on lonely nights—“

“I don’t,” Marinette says, going incandescent.

“You’re among friends, Princess, it’s all right—“

Marinette beans him with an eraser.


	22. Shroud All Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 22 May Prompt: Secrets
> 
> A recurrent problem returns yet again, and Marinette handles it.

Alya hums contentedly as she checks her blog.

“How many?” Marinette asks.

“Four hundred _fifty_ thousand in a week and a half,” Alya says with satisfaction plopping in gobs off of every word.

“ _Wow_ ,” Marinette says.  “Seriously?”

“A- _yup_ ,” Alya says.  “ _And_ I’ve already gotten a few emails asking for permission to use the Chat Noir interview.  With _cha-ching_ attached, too.”

“From who, Voici?”

Alya pouts at Marinette.  

“All right, all right, who?”

“BBC News,” Alya says.

“Damn.” Before either of them can react beyond a narrowing of the eyes and a reaching for something pointy, Alejandro slides in next to Marinette.  He doesn’t try to sling an arm across her shoulder like he had two days ago at lunch; he’d learned his lesson _there_ at least.

He shoots Alya and Marinette a winning smile.  “That is _very_ impressive,” he says.

“It is,” Alya says flatly.

“Buzz off,” Marinette says with an icy stare.

Alejandro’s smile fades.  “Look, Princess,” he says, reaching for her hand; she takes it from the table and sets it in her lap.  “I’ve tried to be nice here.”

“No,” Marinette says as the temperature around them drops, “you’ve tried to get into my pants.  You’ve done this in spite of how I’ve repeatedly told you to _buzz_ _off_ and in spite of how both my boyfriend and I have told you to _buzz off_ and in spite of how clearly I’ve made it that _I’m not interested in you_.”

Dimly, Marinette realizes that she’s standing over Alejandro, who’s cringing away from her on the cafeteria bench.  She can see now why Alix makes a point of standing on things when she addresses people.

“So I’m going to say this one.  Last. Time, and hopefully it’ll make it through your thick skull,” Marinette says.  “ _Piss.  Off._ ”

Alejandro scrambles to his feet and sprints off.

“ _Damn_ , girl,” Nino says as he lowers his phone and stops the recording.  “You ever think of moonlighting as an avenging angel?  Or a superhero or something?”

Marinette twitches a shoulder as she sits.

“On that subject,” Alya says as Nino sits next to her and gives her a peck on the cheek, “mind thanking _him_ for me?  That interview is going to make my career.”

Marinette snorts.  “Alya, do you remember when you first found out that we were dating?”

Alya chews on the inside of her cheek and looks away.  “Yeah.”

“As I recall you were screaming something about getting published?”

“Yeah.”

Marinette smiles at Alya and bumps shoulders with her.  “You made your career a _long_ time before I got involved.”

“Aw,” Alya says.  “Thanks.”

They hug. Nino washes down a bite of sandwich with a swig from a carton of orange juice.  “What,” he says, “no one’s going to congratulate me on that bomb gig I worked last weekend?”

“Later, babe,” Alya says, “we’re having a moment.”

* * *

It starts the next morning.  


Alya greets her at the front doors, flanked by a bored-looking but fuming Alix and a grim-looking Rose.

“That son-of-a-bitch has gone too far,” Alya says as she takes Marinette by the shoulders and steers her through the corridors.  People shy away from Alix and flatten themselves against the wall as Rose passes by.  “I’ve already told admin and they said that they’ll look into it.”

“Look into what—what are you talking about, Alya?” Marinette says.

Alya stops and gestures in front of them as response.

Marinette feels the cold well of anger burn forth from her as she looks at her locker. Specifically at the large red “WHORE” that’s been spray-painted on it in crude block letters, spilling over onto the lockers on either side of hers.

She takes a single, cleansing breath and unlocks her locker, pulling out textbooks and notebooks and sliding them into her bag.

“Someone’s been telling all the girls about how you’re planning on stealing their boyfriends, too,” Alix says, her tone as level as if she had been reporting on the weather.

“It’s Alejandro,” Rose says, with a hint of a growl.  “Sarah told Lisa told Gabrielle told Mylene told Juleka told me.  Told Alya.”

Marinette shuts her locker, closes the combination lock with a _click_ , and turns and walks away, Alya, Alix, and Rose trailing after.

“You’re not going to do anything?” Alya says as they approach their first class.

“You’ve already told admin,” Marinette says calmly, opening the door for the rest of them. Alix and Rose file in.

“Mari, if it came down to it half the school would come down on your side,” Alya says.  “The other half just doesn’t care about this.”

Marinette shrugs and walks in.  “He’s throwing a tantrum,” she says.  “It’ll blow over.”

* * *

Day three is worse.

“Marinette?” Tom says over dinner.

“Yes, Papa?” Marinette says.

Tom and Sabine look at one another, then set their chopsticks down with simultaneous _clicks_ on the table.  Tom folds his hands on the table in front of him; Sabine sits a little straighter and folds her hands in her lap.  Marinette looks back and forth between them, sighs, and sets her bowl down.

“Someone called in today,” Sabine says without preamble, “and mentioned how you’ve been, ahem, ‘corrupting the morals of the school body’.  Apparently you’ve been sleeping around—“

“We know about you and Chat Noir,” Tom says.  Sabine kicks him under the table.

“Tom, we agreed to break it to her gently.”  Sabine turns back to Marinette.  “On that subject, yes, we know about you and Chat, and we’ve been a little worried that you haven’t told us.  Until this happened, we were hoping that you would come clean about him before long.”

Marinette stares at them in shock.

“We approve of him,” Sabine says quickly, “we think that he’s a perfectly nice boy even if he does flirt a little too much, but to be frank that isn’t the issue right now.”

She glances at Tom.  Tom gestures slightly with one hand.

“Are you dating Adrien as well?” Sabine asks.

“Look,” Tom says quickly, “we understand that sometimes, people your age, I mean, people are in relationships with more than one person at a time, and if that’s all right with all of you that’s all right with us, but other people might not see it that way—“

“I am _not_ ,” Marinette says, the mention of Adrien snapping her back into focus, “dating Adrien.”  She takes a breath and pushes her chair from the table a little.

“Uh,” she says.  “So how long have you known about Chat?”

“Almost a year now,” Tom says.

“Around the time that he came over and fell asleep on your homework,” Sabine says.

“O-Oh.” Marinette chews on her upper lip, then her lower.  “Um, did the caller give a name?”

“No,” Sabine says, “but he did say that he was friends with Adrien and didn’t want him to get hurt.”

* * *

Chat lands on her terrace with a scowl on his face and murder in his heart.

_He_ was a _dead man_.  He wouldn’t even need the superpowers that Plagg gave him.  Just five minutes alone in a locked room.

He opens the skylight and hops down to the floor, landing in a crouch, as silent as death.

“Hello, kitty,” Marinette says.  She gestures to her right.  “Chat, this is my Mama, and my Papa.  Mama, Papa, this is Chat Noir.”

Tom growls lowly, his arms crossed across his chest, as Chat stands.

“Break my daughter’s heart,” he rumbles, “and I’ll break—“

“Tom, we agreed,” Sabine interrupts.  Tom wilts.

“But dear,” he says, “when else am I going to get a chance to terrify a superhero?”

“Not now, Tom.”

“Yes, dear.”

Chat considers fleeing to Belgium for a moment.  Sabine’s gaze lands solidly on him and pins him there like an impaled butterfly.

“We need to talk,” she says.

* * *

“With respect,” Chat says, “I have some influence, but not as much as you may think I have.”  He glances at Marinette, who squeezes his hand.  “Especially since I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t involve abusing my powers or revealing myself.  At the moment.”

Tom sighs. “Well,” Sabine says, “it was worth a shot.”

Marinette squeezes Chat’s hand again and stands.

“Mama, Papa,” she says.  “Thank you, but it’s okay.”

“Princess—“

“No, Chat,” Marinette says gently.  “Look, I’ll take care of this tomorrow.”

* * *

“Alejandro,” Marinette says.

“Princess,” he replies with a grin.  The corner of one of Marinette’s eyes twitches.  “So, finally surrendering to the inevitable?”

“No,” she says.  “I’m here to tell you that if you don’t stop this bullshit—“

“You’ll what?” he says.  “I have just as much of an idea as everyone else who’s doing all of this.”

“Most of the school knows at this point,” Marinette says flatly.  “You weren’t as discreet as you thought you were.  Now, stop it and we can part amicably. Otherwise, I _will_ need to take action.”

Alejandro’s eyes flash with sudden rage, and he grabs her by an arm and rises, jabbing his finger in her face.  “Listen here, _bitch_ —“

“Let me go,” Marinette says, voice flat and clear.

Alejandro draws his hand back and tries to slap her.

None of the secreted watchers quite see what happens, but it starts with Marinette letting herself be slapped and ends with Alejandro on the floor, howling in pain.

“Sure that’s going to be enough?” Adrien asks Alya.

“He acted first, she only acted in clear self-defense,” Alya says.  “That plus that favor you called in with Chloe to cover the administrative bullcrap and he’s out on his ass.”

“And the defamation,” Nino chimes in as Marinette leaves the empty classroom they’d agreed to meet in, shutting the door with a quiet click behind her.  “Don’t forget the defamation.”

“Well,” Marinette tells them.  “That’s that. We gonna go now?”

Five seconds after they’ve walked away, a wash of purple, hungry power floods over them, making them stagger.


	23. Reveal All Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 23 May Prompt: Revelations.
> 
> In which Adrien finds himself needing to make some snap decisions.
> 
> A direct continuation of Shroud All Evil.

“ _Balls,_ ” Adrien and Marinette hiss at the same time. They grab each other by the hand, stare at their joined hands for a moment, stare at each other for a moment, let each other go, grab Nino and Alya, and drag them along into a stumbling trot.

“We need to get Marinette out of here,” Adrien commands as they skid around a corner.

“Right, because _we’re_ not in danger at all,” Alya says crossly.

“You aren’t the one who just humiliated him and put him on the ground.”

Alya thinks for a moment as they round another corner.  “True.”

Nino stops as they pass a fire alarm and yanks it.  Alarms immediately start wailing around the school, and a dozen doors slam open a handful of seconds later.

“What?” Nino says in response to Adrien and Marinette’s stares.

“ _Cannot_ believe that I didn’t think of that,” Marinette mutters.  “Come on, let’s go.”

It’s about that moment that the four of them notice the pale purple mist curling about their feet.

All around them, the initial panic of the unexpected alarm is turning to a dull, quiet peace.  Running steps turn into uneven, drunken walks, and then into stillness as their expressions relax into dumb animal obedience, like sheep penned up and left alone. A few succumb almost instantly; others take longer, their panic heightened by the sudden serenity surrounding them, but succumb nonetheless.

They spot Ivan bulling his way through the crowd.  Behind him trail Mylene, Rose, Juleka, and a few others from their class.

“What’s going on?” Ivan calls.

“Akuma!” Marinette shouts over the wailing of the fire alarms.  “We need to go!”

Ivan nods and turns down a hallway, people bouncing off of him.

“Where are the others?” Adrien asks as they catch up.

“Ended up like them,” Alix says, her eyes fogging over for a second before she shakes her head to clear it.  She jabs a thumb over her shoulder at the dull-eyed crowd about them.  Rose trips over someone’s foot and hits the ground with a _whump_ , clearing a temporary space in the mist.  Threads of purple close in on her a heartbeat later.

“Whu’s,” she mumbles, syllables slurring together as Juleka helps her up, “goin’ on?”

“Attack,” Juleka murmurs as Rose blinks a few times and regains a bit of her mobility.

“Why is it only affecting a few people?” Marinette wonders aloud as she spots a few people running ahead of them.  “I mean, Adrien and I feel fine.”

“Bit muzzy, but fine,” Alya says.

“Ditto,” Nino says.

“S-Same here,” Mylene says, trembling slightly as Ivan lays a hand on her shoulder and nods in agreement.

Max and Kim nod in mute terror.

“Well, what’s the common factor here?” Marinette says.

“The factor, _Princess_ ,” a voice says, echoing through their heads, “is that none of you seem to be _worshipping_ me.”

It is, everyone thinks simultaneously, the most beautiful voice that they have ever heard.

The akuma-possessed Alejandro steps around the corner; at once everyone turns to face him, their faces lighting with sudden beatific radiance.

“But of _course_ ,” he hums, voice ringing in a dozen chords, “ _we_ will _see_ to that.   _Bow_ to _Eros_.”

The mental blow comes not like a rampaging flood or an inevitable tide, but like roots burrowing into earth and stone.  First the eye is drawn to his face, which shines with a blinding radiance that pains then soothes, drawing the eye in further, narrowing the world to just him, this perfect, radiant being, that _must_ be adored, that _ought_ to be served with every fragment of your imperfect being—

For Marinette, Chat’s face appears in place of Eros’ like a silent thunderclap.

She blinks. When had she knelt?

Around her, the others groan in various tones of headache and get to their feet.

What in the world had just happened?

“Oh,” Eros sighs.  A bow of shining white flame appears in his hands as he nocks an arrow of light.  “I was _hoping_ that I wouldn’t _need_ to do this.”

Adrien’s tackle hits Ivan at the knees as the arrow zips through the air; the glowing tip misses him by centimeters.

“That’s _my_ thing,” Kim shouts in outrage as Max and Alix each grab an arm and start dragging him along.  “You derivative hack!”

“Move!” Marinette roars.

Right, she was being attacked by a nutjob who couldn’t take no for an answer, she reflects as everyone scatters.  Who apparently can mind-control people—she ducks a pair of clumsily grabbing arms and dodges away from a slow, stumbling tackle—except not everyone.

“This way,” she shouts, and Adrien and Alya and Nino follow the command as sheep follow the sheepdog, darting and bashing and shoving their way between the shambling masses of Eros’ followers.  One of them curses as they run into a wall of bodies; there’s a second and a third curse as they find themselves boxed in.

“In here!” Marinette shouts, pulling open a classroom door.  They pile in and start shoving things in front of the door as it _clunks_ shut.

“Right,” Adrien says after a minute, panting.  “I think we’re trapped.”

A quick examination of the classroom demonstrates that he’s right.  There aren’t any doors aside from the one they’d come through.  Adrien looks speculatively through a window, but then shakes his head.  They’re three stories up, with bare concrete below them.

Well, Marinette thinks.  She was hoping that she wouldn’t have to do this.

“Shit,” Adrien says with a backwards glance at her.  “Guys, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Nino says.  “Dude, you’re not making sense.”

Adrien stands, stretches, and cracks his fingers as the door rattles.  “Right,” he says.  “Plagg!”

An odd thing to say.  An odd thing to say, said with an odd inflection, more a name than anything else.

“Claws out!”

A wash of green-white lightning envelops Adrien, and in his place appears her boyfriend, hair wild, tail lashing the air, staff in hand.  With brisk motions he moves over to the window, considers the bystanders below, and with a muttered word brings Cataclysm to life around his right hand, bright black sparks sizzling about his fingers as he touches them to the glass.

The glass simply dissolves into a fine powder as Chat steps back from the window. He’d gotten better at that, Marinette thinks dazedly.

“Right,” Chat says as he sticks his staff out through the window and extends it. “Slide down.”

He looks around at the three utterly stunned faces looking at him.  “I know that this isn’t the best of times,” he says, casting a nervous glance at the door, “but I need you to— _shit!_ ”

The door explodes inwards; Chat hurls himself forwards, staff spinning before him, to intercept the hail of debris.

He curses again as Eros steps inside, another arrow drawn to his cheek, and fires. The spinning staff slashes down and knocks it aside, but the impact jars it from his hands.  Quick as thought, Eros nocks another arrow, draws, and aims.

Marinette stares down the shaft of the arrow and opens her mouth to scream for Tikki.

The scream dies in her throat as Chat leaps in front of her, and the gleaming arrowhead erupts from his chest.

“No no no no no _no no no_ ,” she hears herself say in an increasingly hysterical whine as Chat’s eyes dull.  “ _No no no no no don’t you fucking die on me kitty don’t do this to me._ ”

Chat slumps into her arms as the arrow dissolves into motes of light.

She feels him shift a moment later, and sit back on his heels.

“Huh,” Chat says, patting at his chest.  “Didn’t work.”

A second and third arrow slam harmlessly through him as he stands.  His expression brightens a moment later and he snaps his fingers.

“Oh!” he says.  “He’s _Eros_.  So those arrows must not work on anyone who’s already in love!”  He frowns as a fourth arrow spears him through a shoulder and dissolves.  “Or in love and loved in return?  Whatever.”

He turns to face the bewildered Eros and cracks his knuckles.

“I am going to feel considerably less sorry about this than I should,” he says.

* * *

Marinette manages to get Nino and Alya away as Chat wails on Eros.  In the confusion she finds a secluded corner; Ladybug shows up for just long enough to purify the akuma and make her escape.

She doesn’t see Chat or get a chance to talk to Adrien until he shows up on her terrace that evening.

“So,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says.

“We need to talk.”


	24. Conquer All Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 24 May Prompt: Without the Mask.
> 
> Adrien and Marinette come clean.
> 
> A direct continuation of Reveal All Evil.

“So,” Marinette says after they’re seated side-by-side on her bed.

“I’m sorry,” Chat says to her without looking up.  He wrings his hands in his lap.  “About deceiving you like this.”

Marinette reaches over to take his hand; he flinches at the contact, and Marinette draws back after a moment.

“I’m not angry,” Marinette says quietly.

A sudden bark of laughter, bitter as hemlock, bubbles up from Chat’s throat.  “You being angry isn’t what I’m worried about. Or at least it isn’t the thing I’m most worried about.”

“Okay,” Marinette says carefully after a few seconds.  “Then what are you worried about?”  When Chat doesn’t answer, she continues, “Okay, then let’s start with something else.  Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

Chat keeps his gaze fixed somewhere above his knees as she scoots a little closer. “Do you remember when you, ah, rejected me?” he says.

There’s a moment’s confusion as Marinette sorts out her memories, dividing them out between Chat and Adrien.

“Oh,” she says.  “When I rejected _Adrien,_ you mean.”

Chat nods. “This,” he says, gesturing slightly with a hand, “could never have lasted.  As much as you loved Chat Noir, it never could’ve lasted unless you cared for Adrien too.”

He chews on his lower lip briefly.  “There’s an old saying,” he says.  “Goes something like ‘you can’t build castles in the air unless you have your feet on rock’. Or muck, I guess.  In my case.”

“Uh,” Marinette says.  He glances sideways.

“My point is,” he says, “is that Chat Noir is the best of me and has always been the best of me.  And I know that it’s no excuse, and I know we should’ve talked it out, but”—he swallows nervously—“I was afraid.  You’re the best thing that’s happened to me since Ladybug and I was so _fucking_ terrified that you’d find out that I just stupid old Adrien.”

He swipes briefly at his eyes.  “I know that people say that love conquers all,” he says, a little more calmly.  “But if you couldn’t love or at least tolerate Adrien then everything we had would’ve just are you _laughing_?”

Marinette stops trying to suppress her giggles and lets herself fall sideways, her head landing with a quiet _thump_ in his lap.  “You really are the king of melodrama,” she says, smiling up at him.

“Hey!”

She reaches over and takes the hand that she isn’t currently pinning to her bed, rubbing her thumb in circles across the back.

“Lemme guess,” Marinette says.  “You were afraid that I’d be disappointed that the famous Chat Noir would turn out to be plain old Adrien Agreste, hm?”

“Uh—“

“Did you know that I had the biggest crush on Adrien back in lycée?”

Chat blinks at her.  “You what?”

“I had,” Marinette repeats slowly.  “A major crush.  On Adrien Agreste.”

Chat’s eyes get a little wide.

“And I thought that Chat Noir was basically a flirty playboy who’d go after anyone even vaguely attractive.”  Marinette shrugs lightly.  “And by the time I figured out how wrong I was, you were getting a little distant. I’m guess I’m just lucky that you fell in love with me twice instead of someone else.”

She turns his hand over in hers and presses a kiss to the pads of each of his fingers.

“There is very little you are and very little you’ve done that I’m disappointed in,” Marinette says.  She frowns briefly.  “Except Theo. I’m very disappointed that you never apologized for lying to him about us.  I mean, he was possessed over that, that was not cool.”

She waves a hand in front her as if shooing away a fly as Chat looks at her, a little stunned.  “Not the moment for it.”

Marinette reaches up and gently cups his face with one hand.  “I’m glad that I didn’t lose you,” she murmurs.  “Any of you.  The parts of you that are mostly Chat and the parts of you that are mostly Adrien.  The best parts of you.”

Her smile tilts a little in contemplation.  “The jealousy and overprotectiveness I wouldn’t miss.  On the fence about the puns.”

Chat doesn’t react, but stares through her, blankly.

“Chat?” Marinette waves a hand before his eyes. “Hello?”

“You’re Ladybug,” he says finally.

“Yup. Figured that if you were going to come clean that I might as well, too.”

Chat stares through her a moment more, then keels over backwards in a dead faint.


	25. The Commissioner's Daughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 25 May Prompt: Minion Marinette.
> 
> Otherwise known as the Batman AU.
> 
> A direct continuation of Conquer All Evil.

minion [ **min** - _yuh_ n]

_noun_

1.     a servile follower or subordinate of a person in power.

2.     **a favored or highly regarded person.**

3.     a minor official.

4.     _Printing._ a 7-point type.

_adjective_

**1.** **dainty; elegant; trim; pretty.**

* * *

Marian Chen tosses a lock of her auburn-dyed hair over a shoulder and huffs out a short breath before she starts again.

Left jab, right hook, dodge invisible baseball bat, catch it in both hands, break nose of wielder with elbow before wrenching the bat free, swing it one-handed into someone’s knee, toss it aside, catch a kick against her side, throw them off balance, roundhouse kick to the ribs, donkey kick backwards, high spinning back kick—

Someone catches her heel and she reacts with sheer reflex.  Her assailant ducks a hammer fist that would’ve broken his jaw, catches her knee before it can paste his testicles across his pelvis, and ducks beneath her left hook.  He charges into her guard and hits her in the midsection with a flying tackle, bringing the both of them to the ground.

“Get off of me, Chat,” Marian grumbles, shoving at his shoulders as the superhero purrs and nuzzles at her neck.  He obliges after a moment’s resistance and helps her to her feet.  Marian dusts herself off and plants her fists firmly on her hips, scowling up at him.

Chat grins down at her as he steps closer, tail surreptitiously winding around one of her legs.  Marian refuses to acknowledge it, but her eyes flick down nonetheless, trailing over his pectorals and biceps, the lines of his abs, clearly defined by his skin-tight costume.  Chat notices the attention and grins wider.

Marian reaches up and trails a finger disinterestedly down the patch of midnight blue on his chest.  “This is new,” she says disinterestedly.  “Pops suggest it?”

“Oh, please,” Chat drawls.  “Do you really think that the old bat has a stylish bone in his body?”

“He certainly pulls off the pointy-eared look better than you do.”

“ _Princess_.”

Marian raises an eyebrow at him.  Chat sighs and slumps.  “You are a police commissioner’s daughter,” he recites dully, “and have been practicing martial arts and practical self-defense since you were old enough to walk.”

“And?”

“And you could totally kick my ass.”

“And?”

“And it is therefore inappropriate to refer to you as Princess.”

“Damn skippy.”  Marian crosses her arms across her chest and smirks at him.  “So, why are you here, kitty?”

“Well,” Chat says as they sit next to each other, “rumor has it that there’s a new superhero in town.”

“Mm,” Marian says.  “Your dad’s not going to like that.  Not one bit.”

“Funny thing,” Chat says.  “He approves. So does most of the Gotham police department.  Seems she’s mostly going after _real_ scum of the earth, the kind that we ought to take down but that we don’t have the time or resources to go after.  Rapists, pedophiles, domestic abusers, that sort of thing.”

“If you’re going to gush about another girl to me, I’m leaving,” Marian says.

Chat leans in and purrs, “Who said anything about another girl?”

Marian rolls her eyes and pecks him quickly on the lips.  “What gave it away?”

“I don’t know many other girls who could pass as supermodels out on the streets fighting crime,” he drawls.  “Especially ones with such an _elegant_ fighting style.”

“Flirt,” Marian grumbles, elbowing him in the ribs.

* * *

Chat groans and sits up, blinking blearily.

“Hey, kitty,” Marinette says without looking.  She leans over, eyes fixed on her laptop screen, and kisses him on a cheek. “Nice nap?  Wow, I can’t believe you actually wrote fanfiction of us.”

Chat’s eyes flicker to the screen and widen with sudden recognition.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says diffidently.

“Kitty,” Marinette sighs, “don’t you dare deny it.  You named the Barbara Gordon look-a-like ‘Marian Chen’ and her dad ‘Tom Chen’.  Also you’re some sort of bastard lovechild of Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne, because your weaponry and outfit are clearly based off of Nightwing but you’re Catwoman and Batman’s son.”

“You have no proof.”

“Don’t need it.  Nerd.”


	26. Concern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 26 May Prompt: Angry Kiss.
> 
> Marinette and Chat get in a bit of a spat.

“What the flying _fuck_?”

Ladybug vaults a chimney and takes three sprinting steps that turn into a leap that carries her across the boulevard below.

“God _fucking_ damnit Prin—Ladybug, don’t you dare fucking run away from me!”

Ladybug ignores him, lassoes a convenient gargoyle as she sprints lengthwise along a roof, and launches herself towards Notre Dame, aiming for the gap between a pair of columns.  She retracts her yoyo and lands in a picture-perfect roll.  Chat opts for simply skidding to a halt, boots and claws scraping across the ancient stone until he comes to a stop in front of her, towering in his fury.

Marinette undoes her transformation with a flare of pink-white light and crosses her arms across her chest, scowling.

“What is your _damage_?” she says.

“My _damage_?” he repeats, incredulously.  “My _damage_? My _damage_ is that you apparently have the self-preservation instinct of a lobotomized _lemming!_ My _damage_ is that you apparently had an attack of _idiocy_ and thought that taking the _bullet_ for me would be a good _idea!_ ”

“Excuse _you—_ “

“For _fuck’s sake_ ,” Chat snarls, stepping closer, “ _I’m_ your shield.  I’ve _always_ been your shield because _guess what._   _You_ can bring me back.   _I_ can’t!”

“And you think that I’m _fine_ with that?” Marinette says, cold rage stealing the heat from her voice. “Did you even stop to think for _one_ fucking moment about whether I’d be _fine_ with that?”

“Did _you_ stop to think logically about—“

Marinette’s voice lashes out like a physical blow, stopping the momentum of his tirade as easily as water stops supersonic rounds.  “No,” Marinette says, jabbing an admonitory finger at him, “shut the _fuck_ up, Adrien, _I’m_ talking now.  Did you ever stop to think about how _I_ felt about this, about you being an overprotective little _shit?”_

A tremble works its way into her voice.  “I still have the _fucking_ nightmares,” she spits.  “You don’t sleep over every night, you aren’t there every night to stop them.”  She takes a breath, shaky with adrenaline. “And I am _not_ going to add anything more to them.”

Chat takes a step forwards, seizes her by the face, and kisses her soundly.

Marinette stands stock-still for a moment, frozen in shock.  Then she reaches up, grabs him by the shoulders, and shoves him away, hard.

“Don’t you _dare_ try that crap on me,” she snaps as Chat trips over his feet and falls flat on the ground, the breath exploding from him in a _wuff_.

“Didn’t mean,” he wheezes.  “Didn’t mean that.”

“You’d better have a damn good explanation, then.”

“I didn’t know,” Chat says, getting slowly to his feet, “that you felt that way. About me.  I didn’t know that was such a big issue for you.”

Marinette stares holes in him as he straightens.

“But you’re not going to stop, are you?” she says.

“You having nightmares is better than you being gone,” Chat says.  “Nightmares you can get over.  Nightmares you can recover from.”

He gestures with a hand.  “You can bring me back,” he repeats, softly.  “I can’t.”

Marinette’s lips thin as she bites back a sharp retort, then turns on a heel and marches away, shoes tapping sharply on the stones.

“I’m sorry,” Chat says.  Marinette doesn’t give any indication as to whether she’s heard.

Her skylight’s unlocked that night, though.


	27. Cardinals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 27 May Prompt: Sin.
> 
> Adrien contemplates matters.

They know exactly who the person is behind the mask now.  He still prefers sleeping over as Chat.  Part of it is just force of habit; he’s spent nearly a year sleeping next to Marinette in the costume, after all.

Part of it is a mental exercise.

Regardless of what Marinette says, Chat Noir _is_ the best of him.  Chat Noir is the part of him that _could_ but doesn’t; the part of him that stares temptation down.

It doesn’t necessarily win.  Just another thing to put up on his list of reasons why she’s better than him.

Marinette and Ladybug both are everything that he’s always wanted to be.  She’s never made a screw-up on the magnitude of him and Theo—well, she did, but at least she had the guts to apologize afterwards, instead of letting the secret fester and burn until brought to light. She’s probably never had to fight down the impulse to abuse their fame for personal profit, she’d probably never even _thought_ of using Ladybug to woo anyone.  In stark contrast to, well, his present situation.

And while he’s on _that_ particular train of thought, he might as well enumerate all the reasons that he doesn’t deserve her.

He’s a selfish, gluttonous fool for one, trying to keep Marinette all to himself, and in spite of how vehemently he’d claim that he’d give it all up for a family that wasn’t broken beyond recognition he finds himself enjoying his obscene wealth a little too much and calculating how he might add to it with the right amount of wheedle and beg towards Nathalie.  He has to fight to remember that he isn’t automatically the most important person in any given room sometimes, and to remember that Chat Noir is supposed to be more than a flaming, wrathful sword of vengeance.

“Kitty,” Marinette mumbles in his arms.

“Princess?”

“Love you.”

Chat freezes for a moment.  “What brought this on?” he asks.

“You’re worrying over something stupid again.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were,” Marinette grumbles, shifting slightly until she’s comfortable. “I love you.  Now go to sleep.”

Chat listens as Marinette’s breathing slows again and she drops into deep sleep.

He really doesn’t deserve her.


	28. Occupational Hazard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 28 May Prompt: Hospital Visits.
> 
> Alya gets in trouble. Again.

“This is undignified,” Alya complains.

“That’s what you get for not looking where you’re going while you’re filming,” Marinette says.  People stare as they walk by.  “You’re just lucky Chat caught you.”

“By _landing_ on me,” Chat says.

“You got hit by a truck once and walked away,” Marinette says.  “Stop whining, kitty.”  Her phone vibrates; she takes it out, glances at the message briefly, and replaces it in her pocket.

“I swear to god, if you don’t put me down I’ll put ass pics all over the Ladyblog,” Alya warns.  “I’ve got a perfect angle here.”

Chat rolls his eyes and readjusts Alya’s position on his shoulder.  “I’m a model,” he says.  “You really think that’s a threat?”

“No antagonizing the reporter, kitty,” Marinette says.  “Alya, you can’t even put weight on your leg, and stop wriggling.”

“This is still undignified,” Alya pouts.

“Hush,” Marinette says.  “We’re here.”

They get more looks and whispers as they enter the emergency room.  Chat lowers Alya as gently as he can into one of the seats; she hisses momentarily in pain as some of her weight shifts onto her leg. Marinette walks up to the front desk, where the nurse on duty is staring at Chat with no small amount of surprise.

“Hi!” Marinette says cheerily.  “One broken leg.”

* * *

Half an hour later, Nino bursts through the doors and is immediately tackled by two security guards.

“Babe!” he sobs as Chat darts forwards and tries to reassure them that, no, he’s not some crazed murderer, he just gets like this sometimes.  “Babe, I’m here!  I’m here!”

“Oh my _god_ , Nino,” Alya groans. 


	29. Damsel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 29 May Prompt: Rescued.
> 
> There's more than one way of saving someone.

Adrien sometimes wonders what it would feel like to be Chat all the time.  To have all that coiled power in his muscles, all that immovable invulnerability in his bones, to see with trails of scent and half-faded echoes instead of just with mere reflected light _all the time_.  How would it feel to have entropy at his beck and call, to have control over a fundamental law of the universe which would one day spell an end to the stars themselves under his control.   _All the time._

He shudders to think of it.

He’s not spending this night with Marinette, though they sleep together maybe three or four nights out of seven and spend another two or three a week on patrol.  This night he’d begged to himself.  He spends most of it atop the Eiffel Tower in a low gargoyle crouch, gaze not fixed on the bakery, but definitely pointed in its general direction.

He watches as the light in the topmost windows switches off, and lets his attention wander to Paris at large.

Which is probably why they always come in pairs.  Ladybug and Chat Noir, Chat Noir and Ladybug.  The power of destruction, to annihilate anything that a rogue Ladybug could create.  The power of creation, to give Ladybug the perfect counter to any plan a rogue Chat Noir could think up.

He wonders if, under different circumstances, Marinette’s first battle would have been not against a possessed Ivan, but him.

As much as he hates to admit it, it feels depressingly plausible.

How many years of solitude had it been before he’d finally managed school?  How many before that where he hadn’t been alone, but had seen the same faces day after day until he’d memorized every facet and crease?  Until he’d found himself watching the progress of the cleaning boy’s acne for entertainment, and used the light grey hairs—auburn-dyed and redyed once every two weeks until they were as brittle as thin ice—in the butler’s mustache and balding pate as a means of telling the passage of time?

How long might it have taken?  For him to come to believe in Chloe, that the weak suffer what they must because they _ought_ , and that the strong do what they can because they _ought_?

It was why he’d fallen for Marinette, he supposes.  Because she had been weak and fought nonetheless; because she’d shown him that faith in the general goodness of people, and hope in brighter days, and love were swords as sharp as any forged.  Because she’d seen the other shadows he might’ve cast, all of them cold and rich and dark and banished them, not by driving them off with light but by arming him instead.

His reverie is broken as Tikki flies up to him and perches companionably on a knee. “Hi, Chat!” the kwami chirrups.

Chat offers up a palm; Tikki flies up and sits on it as he raises it to eye height. “Hello, Tikki,” he says, smiling at the little red spirit.  “How have you been?”

“I’ve been good!” Tikki says with a wide smile.  “Marinette sent me to give you a message.”

Chat blinks.  “You don’t visit,” he drawls, “you don’t write, and you just skip straight to business. All right, what is it?”

Tikki zips up and plants a quick, tingling kiss on his forehead.  “That was the message!” the kwami announces as Chat raises an eyebrow.  “Oh, and Marinette wanted me to tell you that she wishes you sweet dreams.”

Chat chuckles as Tikki sets back down on his palm and leans forwards, planting a kiss atop the spot on Tikki’s forehead.  “Give her that message for me?” he asks as the kwami giggles.  “And tell her that I love her, please.”

“I will!” Tikki says.  “Good night, Chat!”

“Good night.”

He watches as Tikki buzzes away again, a winding red blur that spirals down towards the bakery.  Then he gets up, stretches, and leaps away.

Time for bed, and sweet dreams.


	30. Bronchitis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 30 May Prompt: Sick.
> 
> Marinette gets bronchitis and Adrien helps as best he can.

“And you’re absolutely sure there isn’t some sort of magical healing or whatever that you can use to help me get back on my feet faster?” Marinette types out on her phone.  She shows the screen to Tikki, and the spirit shakes its head.

“Sorry, Marinette.”

“Oh, come on.  Plagg stitched Adrien’s VOCAL CORDS back together that one time.”

“And Plagg was exhausted for two months afterwards,” Tikki says patiently.  “You’ll be fine once your fever breaks.”

“Tikkiiiiiiiiiiiiiii T_T,” Marinette whines.

“No,” Tikki says.  “Healing anything that isn’t caused by one of the akuma is incredibly tiring for me, Marinette, and I won’t do it for something as minor as this.  I’m sorry.”

“Aw,” Marinette types out.  “All right then.”

Marinette slumps back in her bed, then rockets back upright as a coughing fit hits. She hacks a glob of mucus into a bunch of tissues, then throws the entire wadded-up mess into the trash can by her bed.  She lies back with a little more care and groans pitifully at the pounding headache.

* * *

“Still sick, huh?” Adrien asks.

“Yup,” Alya says.  “You guys gonna be able to, uh, _handle_ it?”

Adrien shrugs.  “You said it was just a bad cough and a bit of fever, right?” he says.  “If she can still transform, I can probably solo anything Papillon throws at us and hand it off to her for purification.”

“We should visit, at least,” Nino says.  “Or send her a care package.”

“She’s under quarantine until the fever breaks,” Alya says.  “Doctor’s orders.”

“Well, shoot,” Nino says.  He turns to Adrien.  “You can’t visit?”

“I’m impervious to _physical_ damage,” Adrien says. “Well, near-impervious.  I’m fairly certain that I can still get sick from her.”

“Face masks?” Alya suggests.

Nino and Adrien fall silent for a second as they consider this.

“I’ll go pick up some after school,” Adrien says.

* * *

Marinette slumps back into her bed, groaning pitifully.

Mama had come up to check on her fever a few minutes before.  While her temperature had apparently gone down—she didn’t _feel_ any less flushy—it had been replaced in whole by a headache like railroad spikes being driven through her temples, and all the begging she’d had the strength to muster hadn’t moved Tikki one iota.

The visit had been nice, though short.  She hadn’t been able to do much talking, or any at all, but the company had been nice.

She curls up in her bed.  Be nice if her bed-warmer was here too, but that was a bit much to hope for.

On cue, a knocking comes at her skylight before a familiar mop of blond hair and a pair of green eyes, luminescent with reflected light, appear.  She sighs, picks up her phone from her bedside table, and is halfway through typing out a message when she thinks better of it and just waves him in.

“Princess,” he says as he slides into bed next to her, his voice a little muffled by the surgical mask he’s donned.

“Kitty,” Marinette types on her phone.  “Sorry I’m poor company.”

“You’re never poor company,” he assures her before he curls up around her.

“Are you PURRING?” Marinette types up after a few seconds.  She nudges him in the side with an elbow and shows him the message.

“Yes,” he says.

“Why?”

“Helps healing,” he says.

“What?”

“It does,” he insists.

Marinette gives up.

* * *

Three days later, Marinette, recovered enough to talk and her fever completely gone, arrives at school to find Adrien’s seat unoccupied.

“Where’s Adrien?” she croaks as she slips into her seat.  Nino shoots her an amused look while Alya rolls her eyes.

“Apparently got bronchitis,” she says.

“Same as you,” Nino comments, with far too much nonchalance.


	31. Taken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 31 May Prompt: Kidnapped.
> 
> Let's end things with a bang.

It comes as a bit of a shock when Marinette answers the door only to have a large, burly man with a moustache like a bristling caterpillar shove her aside hard enough to bounce her into a wall.  She stares in shock as he stomps in, calling for Manon.

Well, _crap_.  Can’t transform into Ladybug with witnesses around, can’t physically fight him with any real hope of victory—jeez, he’s almost as big as her Papa—and not enough time to text Adrien.

She is _very_ glad that she’d taken a cue from Adrien and sewn that extra pocket into her jacket.

“Tikki,” she hisses as she wrenches open the broom closet and picks up the vacuum cleaner.  “Get in my jacket, text Adrien.  We need Chat Noir and the police.”

“Yes, Marinette,” the kwami says, and zips from her purse into the kwami-sized inside pocket, lugging her cell along.  There are some quiet vibrations a few moments later as the kwami taps out the message.

Marinette hauls the vacuum cleaner up onto her shoulder as the screams, high-pitched and desperate with panic, start.  As the man walks around the corner with a kicking and struggling Manon under his arm, she brings it down with all her strength, aiming at his head.  He raises an arm and blocks the makeshift club instead, grunting with pain as the vacuum cleaner shatters, gouging shallow cuts in his arm as plastic shards sail in every direction.  His grip loosens for a moment, and Manon takes the opportunity to wriggle free.  Marinette picks her up and runs for it.

She only gets a few steps away before a hand like a hair-covered vise claps down on her shoulder and slams her into the doorframe.  There’s a loud _crak_ of impact; Marinette doesn’t know whether it’s from the frame or her arm. Manon screams louder as the man reaches around Marinette and tries to tear the little girl loose from Marinette’s unrelenting grip.

Doors up and down the hall are beginning to open at the commotion, though, and the man curses and grabs Marinette by the arm, dragging her along as he pulls a short-barreled, matte black handgun from his waistband.

“Try to run and you’re dead, girl,” he growls, before he spots one of the apartment complex’s janitorial staff, frozen behind his cart.  He aims and squeezes off a shot.

Light and thunder in a deafening wave fill the hall.  Manon’s screams grow louder and interspersed with desperate sobs, though Marinette can only just hear it over the sudden ringing in her ears.

She fights to keep her breathing under control as the man drags both her and Manon down the hall, past the cowering janitor, and to a van parked in a skew across three parking spaces.  The man hauls open one of the side doors and hurls the both of them inside.

“Buckle the _fuck_ up,” he bellows at them, gesturing with his pistol before he slams the door shut.  Marinette checks the handles as he hurries over to the driver’s seat.  No dice. He must’ve turned on the child safety locks.

Marinette picks Manon up and settles her in one of the seats, wiping the tears from the little girl’s face as she does.

“It’s going to be all right, Manon,” she says as she clicks the belt buckle home. “It’s going to be all right.”

“I-I don’t want to go with him,” Manon whimpers as Marinette gets seated and buckles up herself, just as the engine rumbles and turns over.

“It’s going to be all right,” Marinette repeats.  “Chat Noir will save us.”

The van moves off, and she starts whispering descriptions to Tikki.

* * *

Adrien’s phone goes off as he’s finishing a late lunch.

He scowls a little at the first text, a simple “HELP” in all caps.  Well, that isn’t cryptic or anything—

His heart stops, then restarts, hammering away like hailstones on a metal roof as a stream of short messages comes in.  White van, black stripe, lengthwise.  Didn’t get license.  Large man kidnapped Manon and Marinette.  Wait, her and Marinette?

“Tikki?” he types quickly.

The ellipses stop for a moment, then restart.  “Yes,” Tikki replies.

“Witnesses?” he types.

“Yes.”

Damn. So that precludes busting out Ladybug before busting some heads.

“Where are you?” Adrien types as he rises.

There’s a brief, terrible, yawning pause.  Logically, he reminds himself, Tikki is just asking Marinette. Logically, Tikki is hiding somewhere on Marinette’s person, in her purse or in a pocket, out of sight, and is therefore in no position to look outside to check the street signs.  Marinette is probably whispering to Tikki whenever she gets the chance, which is going to prevent a quick answer depending on how distracted her their abductor is.

Finally, after the longest minute of his life, a reply.  A street name, and a direction.

“Nathalie,” he says, after punching in her number.  “Can you please cancel my appointments for the rest of today?  I’ve got a terrible headache, I’ll just lie down for a nap.”

Adrien shuts his bedroom door and locks it.

“Plagg,” he calls.  “Plagg! Marinette and Tikki are in trouble!”

“Oh, what is it now?” Plagg groans.

“Kidnapping,” he says.  “Not an akuma.”

Plagg, for once, gets serious.

“Right,” Adrien says.  “Plagg, claws out!”

He reaches back for his staff and snaps it open as he leaps through his window.  He dials the police as he reaches the rooftops and starts running.

“This is Chat Noir,” he snaps before the person on the other line can answer. “I’m in pursuit.  White Honda van with a black stripe running along the side, three occupants.  One is a girl, nine years old, about eighty centimeters, tan skin, brown hair, golden-brown eyes, buck teeth, name is Manon Chamack.  Second one is a girl, seventeen years old, about a hundred sixty-five centimeters, pale skin, black hair in two ponytails, sky-blue eyes, name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng.  Third is a man, over a hundred eighty centimeters, about as wide, big, burly, hairy, tan skin with brown eyes, close-cut brown hair.  He’s the kidnapper, and he’s armed.”

He feeds them the rest of the details as he closes on the van’s last known location.

He _will _see her safe_._

* * *

“Why are you doing this?” Marinette asks the man as she holds Manon’s hand.  The little girl sniffles; she’s well past the point where she’s capable of vocalizing her terror.

The man grunts as he makes another turn.  For a moment Marinette thinks that he isn’t going to answer.

“That _bitch_ isn’t going to take my daughter from me,” he finally growls.

Oh.   _Crap._

Marinette is vaguely aware of Nadja’s ex-husband; she’d started babysitting Manon while the divorce papers were just being finalized, after all.  From what she can remember, though, he’d been a nasty piece of work, more often drunk and violent than not.  It was hardly a surprise that he hadn’t even been granted visitation.

And now, apparently, he’s here for his daughter.

She whispers a quick update to Tikki in her jacket when he’s distracted by a momentary lane change.  Beside her, Manon whimpers, and clutches tighter at Marinette’s hand.

* * *

Chat moves as swiftly as he can, shattering roofing tiles beneath his feet with every powerful step, eyes scanning the traffic below.  His staff vibrates briefly in his hand, and he skids to a stop and glances down.

“They’re heading onto A1,” he shouts into the mouthpiece a few seconds later as he turns and bounds off in another direction.

The police dispatcher on the other end tries to say something but gets cut off. “I need you to block off all of the onramps,” Chat commands.

“Sir, that’s—“

“He has _hostages,_ ” Chat hisses.  “And he’s moving at speed.  If you try to stop him you might hurt them.  I can intercept them safely but I need the road as clear as possible. Get those onramps _shut.  Down._ ”

He cuts the connection before the dispatcher can respond, changes his heading slightly, and moves faster.

* * *

Marinette tries to keep calm as Manon’s father turns onto A1 and starts accelerating. Chat can keep up, she reminds herself, he’s just as resourceful as her—more, in some specialized ways—and it isn’t as though they haven’t chased down speeding vehicles before.  Or something similar at least.

She becomes aware of a distant buzzing noise.

Still, it’s an inconspicuous vehicle in a—well, a thinning crowd of vehicles. And if he didn’t see the message, or if he got onto A1 at the wrong place, then they might be a few dozen kilometers away with the separation growing.

The buzzing resolves itself into a distinct, warbling tone.

Okay, so maybe she’s just a little worried.  It’s been maybe half an hour since Tikki first contacted him, after all. She touches the slight bulge in her jacket for reassurance.  Maybe he was sidetracked.  Maybe there’s an akuma wreaking havoc that he needs to deal with first.  Maybe he’s gotten lost.

The tone becomes a dopplering, wordless scream of a battle cry, punctuated by a heavy _whumph_ on the roof that shakes the entire vehicle and draws a startled curse from Manon’s father.  A second later, a set of loud _spangs_ ring out that sound like rivets being driven through sheet steel.

Her heart leaps, and a wide grin spreads across her face.

He’s _here._

* * *

Chat drives his claws through the roof, tests his grip, and then swings down and over, planting his feet on the wheel well.  He considers his options as he looks through the windows at Marinette and Manon.

Climbing over to the front of the car and punching the driver out, while satisfying, would probably not end well.  Pulling a Bucky and pulling the steering wheel out, suboptimal results, again.  Clawing out the tires is a definite option, but would probably cause the driver to lose control.  So again, damn it, no.

He refocuses on the two passengers.  Get them out first, vengeance later.

He rears back and jabs stiff fingers at the door; his preternaturally sharp claws puncture the metal easily, and a second surge of strength drives his fingers through up to the second knuckle.

And then the son of a bitch swerves.

Before Chat can tear the door from its bearings, the van swerves right sharply, nearly causing him to lose his grip on the roof.  That becomes a secondary concern when he slams into the side of a truck, hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.  A second sideswipe against the truck knocks his head into something metal and unyielding.  A third makes the world go fuzzy, and he loses his grip.

Things get confusing.  He hits the asphalt and rolls to a chorus of honking and the sound of a few dozen sets of tires screeching to a halt, painful in its intensity.  Car doors slam a few seconds later; as the wind shifts, it brings with it shouts and running footsteps, and the smell of burnt rubber.

He comes back to the world.  Around him are a dozen confused and concerned faces.  Behind him, the breadth of the highway is filled with stopped cars.  Ahead of him, the van is shrinking away into the distance.

 _Right_ then.  Plan B.

He brushes off offers of assistance and stands, unclipping his staff from the small of his back.

“Stay back,” he snarls.  “I’m going to do something stupid.”

He uses the staff to launch himself into the air with practiced ease, but he doesn’t aim for the van this time.  He lands and launches, lands, and launches, and finally lands in a crouch about a kilometer ahead of the speeding van.  He clips his staff to his back again; he’ll need both hands if this goes wrong.

“Cataclysm!”

He’d figured out a while back exactly _what_ Cataclysm was.  It was more a lot more than simple bad luck, or a directed, corrupting rot.  It was the power of entropy itself, a weaponized second law of thermodynamics.  Anything made, it could destroy.  Anything ordered, it could reduce to chaos.

And the purest physical expression of that chaos is hopefully going to enable what he’s planning.

He stares the van down as it accelerates towards him, right palm facing outwards in the universal gesture of denial.  He focuses Cataclysm with his will, forcing the magic into compliance.

The van speeds towards him, and Chat Noir stands firm, unyielding.

The van hits him.

At the instant of impact, Cataclysm takes hold.  The three occupants of the van feel a momentary surge of terrible heat flash through their bodies as ravening black motes take organized kinetic energy and reduce it to randomized heat, bringing them to a sudden—more importantly, a non-whiplashy and non-fatal—halt.  Chat grits his teeth and hammers his will through the magic, ripping the deadly heat from them, crushing it into a condensed star, powerful enough to blow off an arm.

He releases the tiny explosive packet of pure heat inside the engine block. Something detonates inside the stationary vehicle with a firecracker _pop_.

Excellent. Now to the punching.

* * *

Manon’s father frantically turns the key in the ignition, and Marinette allows herself to breathe a sigh of relief at the lack of any response.  It’s over, she thinks as Chat hops up onto the hood and prepares to punch through the windscreen.  Finally, it’s over.

Manon’s father pulls the handgun and shoots Chat in the face.  Chat’s head snaps back as the thunderclap report of the pistol fills the van, twice, three times more.  He topples backwards off of the hood.

Before she quite realizes what she’s doing, Marinette moves.  There’s no screaming involved, just a sudden, terrible purpose involving violence and that son-of-a-bitch’s head.

She unbuckles her seatbelt and kicks herself forwards in one smooth motion, aiming a punch at the base of his skull, the soft spot where spine merges into skull. It connects, and in the stunned moment that it buys her, she yanks him back by the collar of his shirt.  His head slams into the seat rest, and she drags him further back, enough so that she can wrap her seatbelt once around his throat.

Right, she thinks as she drives a short punch into his nose.  Now for the gun.

She rakes her nails across his eyes.  He screams and flinches instinctively, but the hand that comes up to cover his eyes isn’t holding the gun.  That hand is still held at full extension, pointed at the windscreen where Chat had been. Oh well, nothing for it.

She reaches forwards, seizes his wrist in both hands, and _hauls_.  The gun goes up, pointing at the roof, and he squeezes off another shot in sheer reaction. Manon screams as the sound slaps against them like a physical blow.  Marinette finds new reserves of strength, and pulls his hand back just the last bit she needs—

Quick as thought, she digs her thumbs in and twists, and his grip pops open, the handgun tumbling to the floor.  Marinette kicks it beneath his seat.  Right, now she can focus on the second bit.

She grabs onto her seatbelt and pulls, tightening the makeshift noose around Manon’s father’s neck.  He gags and flails wildly; several of his ham-handed, clumsy blows buffet her, but she hangs on as his face turns a bright red, shading towards purple.

And then he manages to turn just enough to grab one of her arms.  Before she can react, he’s torn one of her hands free from the seatbelt, loosening the noose just enough to allow him to take a breath. The next second, just as she’s reaching forwards to gouge at his eyes again, he slams her into the door.  Her head knocks against the window hard enough to send spiderweb cracks radiating across the glass, and the world goes fuzzy.

“ _Bitch_ ,” Manon’s father growls, and spits on her. Manon sends up a new tone of wail at the sight of Marinette slumped against the door, half out of her seat, and her father lands a heavy, backhanded blow across her cheek.  Manon settles into desperate, terrified whimpers as he leans down and starts fishing around for the pistol.

Marinette watches with very little understanding of present events as a black-clad fist smashes through the driver’s-side window.  Manon’s father comes up with the pistol, cursing, but the fist uncurls into five claw-tipped fingers that dig into the meat of his neck and pull him through the window.  Marinette tries to sit up and peer through the window next to her.  The sudden wave of vertigo puts a stop to that.

* * *

Chat is _through_ playing superhero.

The white-hot pain in his face and in his eardrums translates easily to white-hot rage as he rises.  He swipes away a trickle of blood from one of the scratches across his forehead as it seals shut and stalks over to the driver’s side window.  He cocks his fist back as the man ducks forwards, scrabbling at the floor of the car.

Then he punches through the window, grabs the man by the throat, and drags him through, flinging him away from the van.  The man hits the ground in a wobbly roll and comes up with the pistol aimed in Chat’s direction.  Chat darts to the side, the gun’s barrel tracking him as he moves, and ducks as the man squeezes off another pair of shots, the bullets humming past his head like very fast, very lethal bumblebees.

This _prick_ is _mince_.

He lunges as the man aims for center mass and squeezes off another shot and the bullet smacks into him just over the heart.  It drops to the ground a moment later, a sad little flattened disc of lead. The fourth shot misses as Chat seizes the barrel of the gun and forces it down, the bullet embedding itself harmlessly in the asphalt.

Chat squeezes as he stares the man down with all the lethality his gaze can muster. Metal bends and polymer cracks in his grip; the man lets the pistol go and takes several stumbling steps backwards as Chat holds the ruined pistol up, then casually drops it to the ground.

“Yuh—Yuh,” the man stutters in his sudden fear.  “You aren’t taking her from me.”

As Chat steps forwards, the man swings a clumsy haymaker at Chat’s head.  Chat blocks it with an upraised arm and gives the man a flat look.  Then, moving in a blur, he drops low and drives a pair of quick jabs into the man’s sternum and gut; something _cracks_ audibly.  As the man doubles over Chat grabs him by an arm and hurls him several meters away, sending him rolling down the abandoned highway.

Chat walks forwards, steps deliberate, as the man stands again, clutching at his chest. As Chat approaches he stumbles back a step, then swings again.  Chat leans away from the first couple of attempted blows, then catches the man’s fist on the third.  Beads of blood well up from the man’s skin as Chat squeezes down, and the man sinks to his knees as bone grinds on bone.

Chat positions himself and brings his free fist back, aiming at the man’s face.

“Chat,” Marinette says, words slurred.  “Stop. Chat.”

Chat glances back over his shoulder.  Marinette is half hanging out of the driver’s side window, eyes glassy and barely focused.

“S’over,” she says.  “Stop it.”

Chat’s ears flick.  He can hear Manon’s sobbing faintly emanating from the mostly glassless window.

“Stay put,” he finally growls at the man.  The man whimpers; he takes it as a yes.

He releases the man and pulls his staff free as a news helicopter starts to circle overhead.

He dials 15.

* * *

“Someone’s got a hero complex,” Marinette says a few nights later, her head in Chat’s lap as he sits crosslegged on her bed.  “You’ve made the news again, kitty.”

“Really?” Chat says, braiding her hair absent-mindedly.

Marinette rolls her eyes and rests her hand gently on his.  He stills.

“I’m fine,” Marinette says.  “You saved us.”

“I might not have,” Chat says to a responding groan from Marinette.

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Marinette says.  “Come here.”

Chat leans down and kisses Marinette briefly on the lips.

“Oh, before I forget,” Marinette says brightly.  “Mama and Papa want you to come over for dinner on Friday.  As thanks.”


End file.
